Uranga: Anton Forde
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OPENING DRINKS
THURSDAY, 25 JUNE, 2026It is impossible to ignore Forde’s obsession with light. It appears in the mountain forms that recall dawn breaking across the Taranaki Maunga ridgeline, and in the spiral motifs where the expanding rhythms echo droplets of water vibrating across the surface.
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Anthea Mentzalis
June, 2026
Uranga is not easily translated. In Te reo Māori, it speaks of the glowing light of dawn and dusk. In the Gaeltacht on the West coast of Èire/Ireland, it is translated as Loinnir (lunner): the glimmer, shimmer, or sparkle of the sun that appears briefly before dissolving again into the day. For Anton Forde, light is more than a phenomenon. It is a fleeting moment in which things briefly become more visible to themselves.
Forde’s practice is one of listening as much as carving. Rather than imposing form upon stone, he allows the material to reveal its own inclinations. Fractures, weight, texture, and memory each guide his hand. Throughout Uranga, stone becomes the vessel through which these attributes merge. Drawn from the landscapes of Taranaki, and shaped through long nights in the studio, each piece carries a profound attentiveness to material and its binding forces. Greywacke, granite, and volcanic rock retain their geological histories even as they are transformed.
This is a fitting entrypoint into a body of work concerned with moments of convergence. Across the exhibition, boundaries soften. Ancient world traditions, Forde’s family history of engineering and carving, as well as his connection to the land around Maunga (mountains both in Aotearoa, and across many shores travelled) are not treated as opposing forces but relationships in dialogue. The double spiral—two energies meeting to create something greater than themselves—is further evidence of this.
Having spent much of his career working through figurative forms, Forde now allows the stone to assume a greater agency, moving towards a more elemental language of carving. His compelling anchor stones, inspired by ancient maritime grapnel, become meditations on what holds us steady. Anchorage can look different to each of us. For Forde, it is his family and friendships, his connection to culture, as well as the land, rivers and oceans that secure him in place.
It is impossible to ignore Forde’s obsession with light. It appears in the mountain forms that recall dawn breaking across the Taranaki Maunga ridgeline, and in the spiral motifs where the expanding rhythms echo droplets of water vibrating across the surface. The teardrop, carved from red granite, carries the memory of grief and renewal. Forde has mastered the act of setting his experiences naturally into the material. The sculptures don’t tell his stories; they inhabit them.
At its heart, Uranga is an exhibition about attention. To stand before these works and encounter stone not as inert matter, but as something truly alive. Forde briefly holds us at this threshold; when the world appears illuminated from within.
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