TOI KORU
Sandy Adsett
Experience the bold brilliance of Toi Koru, the first major survey exhibition of paintings by Māori master of colour and kōwhaiwhai, Dr Sandy Adsett.
Featuring works created over six decades—including a striking new series painted especially for the exhibition—Toi Koru is a must-see celebration of one of the most significant and respected Māori artists of his generation. Showing at Nelson Provincial Museum Pupuri Taonga o Te Tai Ao until 2 Nov 2025.
Image credit – Sandy Adsett, Poutipi, c.1988. Acrylic on board. Collection of the artist. Photo – Norm Heke
Dr Sandy Adsett
Dr Sandy Adsett MNZM is one of the most significant and respected Māori artists of his generation.
Born in 1939 on the family farm in Raupunga, a small Kahungunu (Ngāti Pāhauwera) Māori community just north of Wairoa on the East Coast of the North Island, Adsett received his formal art training from renowned Ngāti Porou master carver Pine Taiapa (1901–1972) through the Education Department’s Art in Schools itinerant teachers training programme of the 1950s and 1960s.
He went on to become a Co-Founder of Te Toihoukura School of Māori Art and Design in Gisborne in the mid-1990s, and has been the principal tutor at Toimairangi School of Māori Art in Hawke’s Bay since 2003.
Made with support from:
