OPENING EVENT: Wednesday 8 April, 5.30-7.30pm

Viriditas (Latin, literally "greenness," formerly translated as "viridity" is a word meaning vitality, fecundity, lushness, verdure, or growth. It is particularly associated with the abbess and theologian Hildegard von Bingen, who used it to refer to or symbolize spiritual and physical health, often as a reflection of the Divine Word or as an aspect of the divine nature.

Rosa Allison is a painter based in Te Whanganui‑a‑Tara (Wellington) whose practice engages plant‑based subject matter as a critical means of examining perception, materiality, and more‑than‑human relationality. Her work approaches botanical forms not as illustrative motifs but as conceptual frameworks through which questions of care, temporality, and embodied experience are explored.

Situated between figuration and abstraction, Allison’s paintings utilise layered surfaces, restrained chromatic palettes, and deliberate mark‑making to resist fixed interpretation. Process and duration are foregrounded as generative forces, allowing meaning to accrue through repetition, attenuation, and subtle shifts in form.

Rosa Allison's work was previously featured in "The Secret Life of Plants" - a group exhibition at Melanie Roger Gallery in 2024. 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.