Rebecca Wallis’ practice explores the space between presence and absence using processes of removal and transference between multiple translucent surfaces. Essentially, she is drawn to the gaps in a painting—parts often unconsidered. In highlighting these between spaces she reveals the transitional, intermediate and liminal states of uncertainty that is part of the painting process that are full of potential. Working through non-representational abstraction her concerns are with the potential of a painting rather than its resolved image.

Rebecca Wallis is a painter based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. She holds a Master of Visual Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London, a formative period that continues to inform the conceptual and material depth of her practice. Wallis is the recipient of the Walker and Hall Art Award and the 2025 New Zealand Painting and Printmaking Award, and her work is included in the most recent edition of 250 Years of New Zealand Painting.

Fertile Ground

Fertile Ground works with the gaps and unfixed spaces between and behind the limitations of surface, embracing the collapse of this surface presence into its own absence. To expand a capacity for emptiness through embracing the hidden spaces between its edges and parts. I intended to create a connection with the presence of consciousness that arises from the absence behind the slipping

and grasping of the intellect. To embrace with liminal states of uncertainty and gestational depths of silence. Constructed from the inside out, it uses processes of removal to voice the experience felt when the veil of one’s reality thins.