Nelson City Centre ArtWalk is an outdoor art gallery in Whakatū Nelson’s streets. With 26 sites, ArtWalk takes you on a journey past artworks by some of the city’s most celebrated artists, as well as artworks that have a particular poignancy to the area.

A long and winding road divides the painting into two realms. The bird-headed watchers and strutters on the light side have their human bodies annotated with music scores, skyscrapers, automobiles and Imperial surveyor’s measures. On the dark side, in the primordial forest lurk ghouls and flying birds, amongst the ferns and trees. There are anthropomorphic figures within this realm but they don’t rule this roost. Bill Hammond may have been inspired to paint this when it was mooted to put a road through to connect the top of the West Coast Te Tai Poutini more directly with the Whakatū Nelson region, a proposal which resurfaced in 2015. Instead of following the Heaphy Track Whakapoāi this time, the suggestion has a route further south towards the Wangapeka.

Jane Evans has captured a quintessential Whakatū scene: a Saturday afternoon yacht race. She had been visiting friends who had a harbour view and was said to be ‘taken with the festive play of Saturday afternoon sails on the water, clouds and sky’—impressions that resulted in a series of paintings. In mainly strong blue tones, the painting shows yachts sailing out through The Cut, the safety chase boats not far behind. The scudding clouds and energetic brushwork suggest a lively breeze. Haulashore Island Motu Mānuka is on the left and Boulder Bank Te Taero a Kereopa to the right, backdropped by Tasman Bay Te Tai-o-Aorere and the Mt Arthur Tuao Wharepapa range in the distance.

Robin Slow’s (Ngāti Tama) Aratoi refers to the Māori name for The Suter Art Gallery: Te Aratoi o Whakatū. Ara means pathway. Toi has many meanings, but in this context it relates to art and knowledge. Te Aratoi o Whakatū: the pathway to art in Whakatū Nelson. In Māori mythology, the tūī is the guardian of the doorway to the 12th heaven, Pūmotomoto, the source of esoteric knowledge. Here, the tūī plunges through Te Pō (the eternal darkness) bringing higher knowledge to this world and signalling the dawn of Te Ao Mārama (the world of light). Slow’s work combines abstract Māori art forms with realistic imagery, typically of the natural environment, and he responds to mythological stories, historical events and personal experiences in a layered and poetic manner.

Sir Mountford Tosswill (Toss) Woollaston first came to the Whakatū region as a teenager, looking for rural work. After studying in Ōtautahi Christchurch and Ōtepoti Dunedin, and spending some time in Māwhera Greymouth, he settled in Riwaka, where he built a house and studio. He is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most important painters of the 20th century. Woollaston painted the landscapes he knew and the people around him over and over again, explaining his style as one where he wanted ‘to reach at one stroke the essence of the feeling I had for the landscape’. In Kiln near Riwaka (1971), his expressionistic style has captured the shapes and colours of the farm sheds and hop kiln, against a backdrop of the steep-sided Tākaka Hill—a rural landscape that was very familiar to him. This actual scene can be glimpsed from State Highway 60 before the turnoff to Kaiteriteri and Tākaka Hill.