Inspired by author Richard Shaw’s trilogy exploring his Pākehā whakapapa and its relation to colonial legacies—The Forgotten Coast (2021), The Unsettled (2024) and The Good Settler (2026)—Unsettling Nairn Street invites seven contemporary artists to respond to the ground floor rooms of Nairn Street Cottage.

The Pākehā story of the Cottage begins with the New Zealand Company’s contentious division of Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington into 1,100 one-acre sections. Plot Acre 53 was sold to George Duppa before being purchased by William and Catherine Wallis, who arrived from England aboard the Southern Cross in 1857. William, a carpenter, built the cottage on Nairn Street himself, and it was home to the Wallis whānau for three generations before opening as Te Whanganui-a-Tara’s first house museum in 1980.

In Unsettling Nairn Street, each artist engages with the historic site; its materiality and the layered narratives embedded within the cottage and the whenua on which it stands. From a nursery inspired by the 1860s, where fragments of early wallpaper survive, to a kitchen evoking the 1970s, the artists stir up the past, inviting visitors to experience Nairn Street Cottage and the stories and histories it represents anew.

Artists: Heidi Brickell, Paula Collier, Riki Pirihi, Isabella Lepoamo, George Turner, Daniel Unverricht and Erica van Zon.