OPENING EVENT: Thursday, 14 November, 5.30-7.30pm

ARTIST TALK: Veronica Herber in conversation with Dina Jezdic - Saturday, 23 November, 2pm

New work by Veronica Herber - her first solo exhibition with Melanie Roger Gallery.

“Making my way home speaks to me from the place of being on a life journey and after this life that journey carries on. We are always being pulled back to our original home in consciousness. A place I connect to when I go into a meditative state to make the work.

My musician husband Derek (dDub) Browne sadly passed away some years ago. I had managed his band for several years, then our roles shifted when I decided to go to art school and he supported my art practice.  So now I source the titles for my work from his lyrics. In a spooky way, there is always a perfect lyric that ‘speaks’ to each piece.  His words describe the work in ways I'm unable to, so I feel in this way we are still collaborating.

‘Making my way home’ is a song from dDub’s second album Medicine Man and was the perfect choice for this series of work. My practice is constantly evolving and to quote Justin Paton now has an ‘almost cosmic’ quality to it."

While attending art school, Herber moved from being a painter when she unearthed a desire to work with different processes, discovering masking tape as a medium half way through her degree. Over two years of experimentation she fell in love with the immediacy and versatility of the material, culminating in her trademark tape fabric and large-scale outdoor sculpture works.

A deep conversation with Japanese washi tape ensued and now Herber has a formalist practice with each work a process leading to the next. These works are made from hand torn pieces of Japanese Washi Foto tape with a minimalist leaning, revolving around the structure of the grid.

"Veronica Herber uses torn washi tape and graphite to create a visual space that feels smoky, shifting, mysterious and almost cosmic.  The work could borrow an alternative title from the famous book of aesthetics by Junichiro Tanazaki - In Praise of Shadows". (Justin Paton, Senior Curator, International Art, Art Gallery of NSW, 2024)

Veronica Herber is a full time artist based in Tamaki Makaurau who has exhibited throughout Aotearoa and internationally. Upon graduating from AUT, Herber was invited to participate in several large outdoor sculpture shows  - she has been included four times at Sculpture by the Sea (Sydney, Australia), three at Waiheke Headland on the Gulf exhibitions and created installations in Mexico and Cuba. 

Her works on paper are included in the Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and The Arts House Trust, plus private collections throughout New Zealand.  She received the Arts Trust New Zealand sculptor Award, Sculpture by the Sea Bondi in 2015 and was a Parkin Prize finalist 2024, 2022, 2021, 2017.