Receiving the Springboard Award for Visual Arts gifted by the Kate Gray Memorial Trust – Mentored by 2021 Laureate Brett Graham

A.J Manaaki Hope (Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu; Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa, Ngāti Te Ata; Pākehā) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Ōtaki whose work moves  between painting, whakairo, assemblage, and sound. 

Using salvaged materials, they build  objects that return images to what holds: a figure, a vessel, a tool, a taonga form.  Sourced from family snapshots and museum archives, these anchors sit against supports with their own past lives. 

The works hold close to whenua and whānau while addressing the ongoing weight of colonial histories on the ecological and cultural landscape. Through reduction and repair, their practice considers how memory and mauri persist in materials and how images can be re-grounded in place. 

Panel statement: "A.J's practice is deeply connected to language and whakapapa, and over several years he has shown a strong commitment to professional growth through exhibiting, formal learning, personal haerenga and community building. His recent exhibition Daffodils for Taua featured sophisticated unstretched paintings with whakairo and cast sculptural elements that playfully hung in space. He has been awarded the Springboard Award in recognition of this highly successful exhibition and the momentum mentorship could offer at this significant moment in his career."