The Good Oil

In this episode, I sit down with Richard Lewer at Suite Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau.

This episode is part of a series I’m delivering this season for the McCahon House Parehuia Residency, celebrating their 20th Anniversary, where I’m volunteering the services of The Good Oil to highlight the wonderful and important work they do, and some of their very impressive alumni, which includes Richard.

Richard has a BFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland and and Master of Visual Arts from Victoria College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne.

His work is held in numerous public and private collections, including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongawera, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He is also the recipient of several art prizes and residencies, including the 2026 Archibald Portrait Prize, and of course is Alumni of the McCahon House Parehuia residency.

Richard is represented in Suite Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau, Jan Murphy Gallery in Brisbane and Hugo Michell in Sydney.

There are images of the works that we talk about on The Good Oil Richard Lewer Instagram Post for your reference.

In the episode, you’ll hear Richard talk about how Colin McCahon text paintings spoke to him as a teenager, that he views his job as a painter is to document raw but beautiful, personal tender moments of human experience, how he’d love to be a funeral painter, the various substrates that he works with and how they excite him because of the different narrative they add to works, and why he describes painting as a bit like digging a hole.

In this episode, I visit Martin Basher at his studio in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

This episode is part of a series I’m delivering this season for the McCahon House Parehuia Residency, celebrating their 20th Anniversary, where I’m volunteering the services of The Good Oil to highlight the wonderful and important work they do, and some of their very impressive alumni, which includes Martin.

Martin has a BFA and MFA, both from Columbia University in New York.

His work is held in numerous public and private collections, including Chartwell Collection at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki , The Agnes Gund Collection New York, the Majuda Collection also in New York, at the Pah Homestead Collection in Auckland. He has also been the recipient of several art prizes and residencies including the La Brea Residency in Los Angeles, the Susan Goodman Residency in Berlin, and, of course, the McCahon House Parehuia Residency in Tāmaki Makaurau.

Martin is represented by Starkwhite Gallery in Auckland.

There are images of the works that we talk about on The Good Oil Martin Basher Instagram Post for your reference.

You’ll hear Martin the unlikely role that itinerant agricultural work took in developing his practice, his relationship to the act of painting itself, which has seen him try to hide his hand in different ways, while also admitting he needs the very act of painting in his life, the two literary figures that have helped shape the subject matter, the multifaceted role that cardboard plays and represents in the work, his ongoing environmental concerns, which are still driving a driving force for him.

In this episode, I visit Ed Bats at his home and studio.

Ed’s art qualifications are a little different from most artists that appear on the podcast, having been largely educated within the graffiti art community in Cape Town and New Zealand, a self confessed “confusing degree” and the world of furniture making and design.

At this point in an introduction I usually reel off a list of public collections that an artist is in. The inclusion of Ed in an episode is instead a little different - and this requires more editoralising than usually happens here. In Ed’s case I believe the proof points of what a strong practice his is, are his high degree of technical skill in making, combined with a strong awareness, appreciation and application of art history into his works. In part this is taking the baton of sorts from Don Driver, a figure from Aotearoa Art History I’m really excited to see paid homage to. All of that comes together, with his own ideas of course, to produce really compelling contemporary art practice. Likely some of the reasons he has been added to so many private collections in the last few years. The opinion you didn’t ask for ends there, promise.

Ed is represented by Peg Gallery in Te Whanganui-a-Tara

There are images of the works that we talk about on The Good Oil Ed Bats Instagram Post for your reference.

You’ll hear Ed talk about how his graffiti and joinery practices influence and presents itself in his studio practice, how important music is as a studio assistant, the motifs in his work that he can’t seem to escape from and his colour choices in painting, which are often secondary to the creation of substrate he builds.

In this episode, I visit Neke Moa at her home and studio in Ōtaki on the Kāpiti Coast

By the way, this episode is part of a series I’m delivering this season for the McCahon House Parehuia Residency, celebrating their 20th Anniversary, where I’m volunteering the services of The Good Oil to highlight the wonderful and important work they do, and some of their very impressive alumni, which includes Neke.

Neke is Te Whare Papaīra, Ngāti Kahungunu, Kāi Tahu, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tūwharetoa.

She has several qualifications in arts and teaching, including Diploma of Design and Art, from Te Wānanga-ō-Rau-kawa.

Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, the Dowse Art Museum, and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. She is also the recipient of several art prizes and residencies, including the McCahon House Parehuia residency.

Neke is represented by Season Gallery in Tamaki Makaurau.

There are images of the works that we talk about on The Good Oil Neke Moa Instagram Post for your reference. I’ve also included a list of some of the te reo Māori that is in the episode, just in case you’re not familiar with all those words.

You’ll hear Neke explain that her practice is always a collaborative one, even when she is in the studio by herself, how and why her work is sometimes respected more overseas than it is in Aotearoa, the role of activism in the practice and works, how the historical pakeha definition of art and value systems devalued Maori practices and therefore excluded the preservation of some taonga, and how toi Māori is in a new evolutionary phase.

In this episode, I visit Graham Fletcher at his home and studio in Sawyers Bay, Otago.

Graham has several qualifications to him name, including a Master of Fine Arts (with Hons) and a Doctor of Fine Arts, both from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. He has shown in numerous solo and group shows for over 25 years, and his work is held in many private and public collections, including in the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, The Sarjeant Galley Te Whare o Rehua and the Dowse Art Museum, and has a long list of awards and residencies to his name.

He is represented by Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland and Milford Gallery in Ōtepote Dunedin.

There are images of the paintings that we talk about on The Good Oil Graham Fletcher Instagram Post for your reference.

You’ll hear Graham talk about how the combination of a visit to a home in Mt Eden and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and architecture magazines have had an unexpected and huge impact in the eventual direction of his practice, the relationship between tribal works and contemporary paintings that appear as subjects in his work, the role of the surreal, perfect world of advertisements of the 1960’s as rich reference material and the main lesson that he has taken from Matisse.