(She / Her)

parched and weary, she wells up. 2024

whenua pigment watercolour (mud, Boggy Pond, Wairarapa Moana) on stretched hemp

Parched and weary, she wells up shows cracked earth spreading across the canvas in an intricate web. This work emerged from a poem written during a year-long project with Boggy Pond, one of the repo/wetlands bordering Wairarapa Moana. Together, the painting and poem reflect on the interconnected, layered life of wetlands — and on the ways these “wild” spaces have been drained, divided, and controlled in Aotearoa. This includes both historic and ongoing flooding caused by colonial land practices. Despite this, the work gestures toward restoration and resilience. The watercolour pigment is made from the wetland’s own mud, inviting Boggy Pond to act as a collaborator in my making. In doing so, it acknowledges the repo’s agency and wildness, and calls for more reciprocal approaches to conservation and care. 

Tara Luty (b. 1995 Inverness, Scotland, she/her) is an artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington. Her practice examines conceptions of landscape and wilderness, and the dynamic dichotomy of culture and nature. Through continual site-specific research and material collaboration with natural environments, she probes at the entanglement of humans and the more-than-human. These relational processes come to dictate media – Luty’s practice is primarily centred on painting, intersecting with mark making, installation, and photography. By involving the natural environment in the generation of her works, Luty’s work fosters deeper connections with the world, its life-forms, and her identity as a whole. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider their connection, positionality, and responsibility to the land.

Luty completed a BFA (Hons) in 2023 from Massey University Toi Rauwhārangi. She has shown work in a number of group shows, most recently at Hunters and Collectors (2025) and at twentysix Gallery (2023). Her first solo show took place at Three Eyes Gallery in 2024.