For more than five decades, Roy Good has occupied a distinctive position in Aotearoa New Zealand’s visual culture, moving between painting, graphic design and television with an unwavering commitment to abstraction. His work has appeared on gallery walls, television screens and in some of the country’s most recognisable visual identities. Yet these seemingly disparate pursuits have always been connected by a fascination with geometry, colour and the possibilities of form.

Directed by Craig Ray, the 80-minute documentary Parallel Universe: The Art and Design of Roy Good explores the life and work of an artist whose practice has consistently challenged the boundaries between fine art and design. The film screens at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū on 28 November as part of the Resene Architecture Film Festival, followed by a conversation between Good and the Gallery’s former director, Jenny Harper.

Born in Timaru in 1945, Good studied painting at the University of Canterbury’s Ilam School of Fine Arts before moving to Auckland in 1966. There, he became part of a generation of artists pursuing new directions in abstraction, exhibiting alongside figures including Milan Mrkusich, Gordon Walters, Ian Scott and Geoff Thornley. At a time when much Aotearoa painting remained concerned with landscape and national identity, Good looked towards the international modernist traditions of Bauhaus, De Stijl and geometric abstraction.

These influences found expression not only in his paintings but also in an extraordinary parallel career in design. Beginning with the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, Good developed innovative sets and graphics for television, bringing the visual language of Op Art and modernism into living rooms across the country. He later served as Head of Design at Television New Zealand from 1983 to 1989, contributing to a period in which television graphics became increasingly sophisticated expressions of national identity.

Among his best-known contributions are the identities developed for TVNZ and South Pacific Television, alongside designs for New Zealand’s international exhibition pavilions and the 1990 sesquicentennial celebrations. His work demonstrates how the principles of abstraction could extend beyond the canvas, shaping the everyday visual environment.

Throughout these commercial projects, Good maintained an independent painting practice. His carefully constructed compositions explore the relationships between shape, space, rhythm and perception, often using geometric forms to create a sense of movement or optical tension. Rather than treating art and design as separate disciplines, Good has approached both as interconnected means of visual investigation.

The documentary returns to the artist’s studio in West Auckland, offering an opportunity to consider the consistency of this vision across decades of changing artistic and cultural landscapes.

For Christchurch audiences, the screening also reconnects Good with the city where his formal artistic education began. Accompanied by a discussion with Jenny Harper, Parallel Universe offers a timely opportunity to reconsider an artist whose influence extends well beyond the conventional boundaries of the gallery.