Chips Flying: Carin Wilson at Objectspace

There is a chair in the Wellington Central Library that most people have sat in without knowing who made it. Carin Wilson made it. He also made the pews for a Manihiki church, conceptualised the interiors of the Whakata Māori television studios, and has spent the better part of five decades making the case, through furniture, sculpture, teaching and advocacy, that what we make in this country should look like this country.

He maramara tupu aranga opens at Objectspace's Ockham Gallery on 27 June and runs through to 30 August. It is the first major retrospective of Wilson's work, and it has been a long time coming.

The title translates loosely as letting chips fly and seeing what takes form. It captures something true about how he works. Wilson (Mātaatua, Ngāti Awa, Tūhourangi) is the son of an Italian mother and grew up between two making traditions. He walked away from law school in the 1970s to make furniture in Christchurch, and has not stopped since. Founder of Studio Pasifika, founding chair of Ngā Aho: Network of Māori Design Professionals, former president of both the Designers Institute and the Crafts Council. The institutional record is substantial. But the work is more substantial still.

At the centre of it is rākau. Wood is not simply Wilson's material. By his own account it is a companion, a refuge, something he always returns to. That relationship has driven a design philosophy grounded entirely in place, in whenua, in what grows here, in what the land offers and what it demands in return. In the 1980s, frustrated by New Zealand design's inability to look beyond European precedent, Wilson and a group of fellow makers began pushing for something different. They wanted a design culture that was genuinely native to this country. That conversation is still unfinished. This exhibition contributes to it.

The show is curated by Zoe Black with exhibition design by Steven Junil Park. It features furniture alongside ephemera, the documentary residue of a life spent making things that matter.

In 2024, Wilson was recognised as an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate, receiving the Design Award gifted by the Crane Foundation. That award, the first of its kind through our foundation, acknowledged exactly the qualities that have defined his practice: a commitment to craft that runs deeper than fashion, and an influence that extends well beyond his own studio.

The Crane Foundation is proud to support He maramara tupu aranga as Exhibition Patron. We are equally proud to have played a small role in recognising the man behind it.

He maramara tupu aranga is at Objectspace, 8 Ponsonby Road, Auckland, from 27 June to 30 August 2026.