Bruce Foster

I’m a Master’s graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts. I've exhibited widely and have work represented in a number of public collections including: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery, City Gallery Wellington, and Christchurch Art Gallery.

My colour work in the 1980s were meditations on the dialogue between the natural and man-made environments. The coastline figured prominently in my work but subjects also included other water/land interfaces such as rivers, lakes and canals. This work continues to the present day.

In the 1990s I explored the cultural rituals of recreation and collaborated with writer Lloyd Jones for the publication ‘Last Saturday’ (VUP) and the exhibition of the same title at the National Library Gallery, Wellington.

In 2011 I was one of nine artists on the ‘Kermadec Project: Lines Across the Ocean’, an initiative to articulate the issues facing one of the few pristine ocean sites left on the planet. This work was shown in eleven public galleries in New Zealand. My primary contributions were the series, ‘Invasive species’ and ‘Mapping the Pacific’.

I began ‘Intertidal’ in 2014. It explores environmental changes over on a small stretch of North Auckland coastline, the Mangawhai Spit. This vast archeological site is a stark picture of dramatic and irreversible environmental change. ‘Intertidal’ was shown at CEAC and The Vivian galleries. At Bowen Galleries this year, I showed ‘Housekeeping’, a collection of ‘Intertidal’ works together with a new series, ‘Carbon Ghosts’, traces of human occupation over 800 years.