Fish and Chips, Maketu

Robin White’s art celebrates the significance of everyday things. She creates work that responds to her own environment, reflecting specific times and places with both clarity and simplicity. White’s work maps the many places that she has lived – from Bottle Creek near Wellington to the Pacific island of Kiribati – and the communities that she has been part of. Fish and Chips, Maketu has become an iconic image of ‘New Zealandness’.

White’s characteristic sharply outlined forms reveal the charm of this unpretentious building, and the quiet dignity of the family businesses which form the heart of small communities. She says, ‘I’m not concerned with just recording something though. I take great liberties with the environment, using it to my own ends. I’ve always been conscious that painting is fundamentally an abstract thing.’

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