SHANNON TE AO

Education and Career

Te Ao graduated with a BFA (First Class Honours) from the University of Auckland‘s Elam School of Fine Arts in 2009, completing a Diploma in Teaching the following year. He later earned an MFA (First Class Honours) from the College of Creative Arts at Massey University Wellington in 2016. His journey into art came through music and the encouragement of high school teachers in Sydney, eventually leading him to pursue tertiary studies in the visual arts.

Practice and Themes

Working predominantly with moving image installation, performance, and video, Te Ao draws extensively on Māori lyrical and literary sources including whakataukī (proverbs), waiata (song), and poetry, as well as texts from popular culture. His practice investigates Māori paradigms, testing alternative creative, social, and linguistic models in relation to contemporary video art and performative practices. The richly layered works create a temporal compression where past and present co-exist, linking daily life to multifarious social, cultural, and philosophical histories.

Growing up in Australia and later reconnecting with his Māori heritage, Te Ao’s work reflects a personal and political journey to understand and assert his culture within contemporary art spaces. He frequently collaborates with other artists and performers, such as composer Kurt Komene (Te Ātiawa, Taranaki Whānui), bringing multiple perspectives and knowledge to his explorations of Māori thought and experience.

Major Works and Recognition

Te Ao’s seminal work two shoots that stretch far out (2013–14) features the artist barefoot in black t-shirt and jeans, reciting 19th-century waiata lyrics to various animals including geese, chickens, a swan, a rabbit, a wallaby, and a donkey. The work was shown at the 19th Biennale of Sydney in 2014 and earned him New Zealand’s most prestigious contemporary art award, the Walters Prize, in 2016. For the Walters Prize exhibition, Te Ao also presented Okea ururoatia (never say die) (2016), an installation of living plants arranged on pallets and lit by hanging lights.

Another significant work, Ia rā, ia rā (rere runga, rere raro)—Everyday (I fly high, I fly low) (2021), is a three-channel video installation that draws on Māori histories about the tīwakawaka (fantail) as a harbinger of death. Originally commissioned by the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art for the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10), this work represented Aotearoa New Zealand at both the 13th and 15th Gwangju Biennale Pavilions (2021 and 2024). The installation features two young men in motion, with a pao (song) by Kurt Komene following the fantail’s flight path. You can read further on the artist’s presentation in Gwangju here.

In addition to the above, Te Ao has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally. Other solo exhibitions include:

• Ka mua, ka muri at REMAI Modern in Saskatoon and Oakville Galleries in Toronto (co-commissioned 2020), and at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery in Auckland (2021). The exhibition’s title, meaning “to walk backwards into the future,” explores experiences of time, history, and song, suggesting that past, present, and future co-exist on a continuum.
• With the sun aglow, I have my pensive moods at Te Tuhi, Auckland (2017), and
• Tēnei Ao Kawa Nei at Christchurch Art Gallery (2017).

In 2022, Te Ao curated the exhibition Matarau at City Gallery Wellington, demonstrating his parallel practice as a curator. Most recently in 2025, he participated in a group exhibition Hundreds upon thousands of moments glitter in unison with Jane Jin Kaisen and Peter Robinson at Coastal Signs.

Collections

Te Ao’s work is held in public collections including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, which acquired two shoots that stretch far out in 2016, and Dunedin Public Art Gallery, which acquired what was or could be today (again) (2019), a video installation focusing on endurance athlete Ngarama Milner-Olsen swimming across Lake Taupō.

Shannon Te Ao FAQs

Ocula | 2026