20th Estuary Art and Ecology Awards
Group Exhibition | 4 July - 3 October 2026 | Malcolm Smith Gallery, UXBRIDGE Art and Culture, Auckland
Artists include Rubes Prattley-Jones, Amber Adams, Anna Agoston, Tony Clarke, Charli De Koning, Amanda Densham, Matt Dowman, Wendy Hannah, Rowan Holt, Yolanda Huang, Tim Larkin, Rose Lee, Penny Lin, Thomas Lord, Minke Lupa, Paul Mclachlan, Fiona Newton, Greg Nunes, Isla Osbourne, Kurt Payne, Jessie Randles, Damian Stones.
About exhibition
The Estuary Art and Ecology Awards are Aotearoa’s only annual contemporary art awards with ecology at the core. Artists are invited to research and respond to the Tāmaki Estuary, explore the ecological value of this vital waterway, and encourage action against its pollution. Finalists are exhibited in the Malcolm Smith Gallery at UXBRIDGE Arts and Culture and winning artworks will be intelligent and innovative responses to ecology in the field of contemporary art.
About Rubes’s work
Rubes’s work took 3rd place in the awards
‘Focusing on two beaches within the Tāmaki Estuary, Karaka Bay Beach and Point England Beach, I explore my relationship with the coastal landscape. Created at beaches with differing landscapes and histories, but similar struggles of erosion and human intervention, the pieces resonate with both familiarity and dissonance. Wild clay sourced on location was pressed directly onto rocks and geological formations, capturing the textures of the coastline on one side, and on the other the marks made by my hands. I feel a deep sense of connection to these beaches and the estuary more broadly, both due to my love of nature, and in relation to my queer identity. Aligning my own body with the estuary, which represents a fluid, non- binary space. A place of transition, the meeting and intermingling of salt water and fresh water creates its own unique ecology.’
Works by Rubes
The Mouth and The Body (low tide): wild clay, sea glass, sediment from Karaka Bay Beach and Point England Beach, 130 x 70 x 90 mm and 120 x 90x90mm
