OPENING EVENT: Wednesday 8 April, 5.30-7.30pm

Reflecting on her Christian upbringing, Rosa Allison questions inherited structures that place humans and the Christian God above the natural world, leading to a culture of dominance and exploitation of the whenua.

Alternatively, the concept of viriditas was coined by Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th-century German mystic, nun, and visionary. The word suggests greenness, sap, fecundity, vitality, and a life-force that animates all living things. It imagines the divine as present within nature rather than existing above it.

In these paintings, Rosa depicts her interpretation of viriditas through oil paint. The works are filled with sexual innuendo: phallic and yonic forms appear alongside birds, snakes, mushrooms, fish, and plant spirits. Animal, plant, and human bodies merge and dissolve into one another, moving between abstraction and figuration. Green becomes the dominant colour, ranging from fresh sapling tones to dark, swampy hues, each suggesting different states of life and growth.

Viriditas proposes a re-enchanted ecology one that honours nature as alive and sacred, resonating with the feminine presence of Papatūānuku.

Rosa Allison (b. 1993) is an artist from Pōneke. She studied painting at Ilam School of Fine Arts in Canterbury and later completed a Master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in London. Recent solo exhibitions include 'Flying Dreams' at Page Gallery (2025) and 'The Witches Herbarium' at Chamber Gallery, Rangiora (2024). Rosa first exhibited with Melanie Roger Gallery as part of the group exhibition 'The Secret Life of Plants'.  Artists included Rosa Allison, Georgia Arnold, Heidi Brickell, Star Gossage, Ruth Ige, Tessa Laird, Layla Rudneva Mackay, Ann Shelton and Sarah Smuts-Kennedy.

This is her first solo exhibition with Melanie Roger Gallery.  

NOTE:
Gallery hours are subject to change and will vary during the Aotearoa Art Fair from 30 April - 3 May.