In The Highlander’s Farewell, Ayesha Green (Kāi Tahu (Ōtākou), Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga, Pākehā) draws out conversations around the migration of Scots to Aotearoa New Zealand in the 19th century, considering the underpinning social and political factors behind it and the implications for a new nation.

Born in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Green has developed the exhibition especially for Rokowhiria. It is her first solo presentation in Waitaha Canterbury. Following five months of research and travel in Great Britain in 2024, the show considers 19th-century Scottish emigration to Aotearoa and relationships between the displacement of Highland communities and the colonisation of Māori land. Green’s own Scottish ancestors settled at Alford Forest, near Ashburton.

The ambitious new body of work spans portraits, landscapes and reimagined historical imagery, with monumental paintings and a sculptural stage set transforming Rokowhiria, Art & Heritage’s gallery spaces. Through these works, Green traces what she describes as a ‘whakapapa of colonisation’, while attending to the grief of separation from ancestral land.