Nikau Superette Art takes place in a restored and repurposed community notice board on Queen Mary Avenue in New Lynn. Originally built by the Queen Mary Avenue and Durrant Place Neighbourhood Support Group and sponsored by a local real estate agency – Glover Real Estate – the notice board fell into disuse as social media took over the role of community notices.
Each Season presents a range of site-responsive micro exhibitions in the box of the community notice board. Artists have engaged with the idea of community notices, neighbourhood support networks, hyper local shopping, dairy economics, estuary ecologies, community politics, and observational recordings of the local area.
Season One artists included Robbie Fraser, Melissa Laing, Indira Neville, Carol Lee-Honson, Ross Liew and HOOPLA.
Season Two began in November 2023 and presented projects by Melissa Laing, Juliette Laird, J.A. Kennedy, Jack Tilson, Jody Yawa McMillan and Ela Tukuhaukava.
Season Three commenced in July 2024 presented work by Melissa Laing, Varun Garg, Catherine Thompson, Arwen Flowers and Freya Kemp.
Season Four commenced in March 2025 and presents work by Melissa Laing, Layne Waerea, SJ Blake, Barbara Anderson, Deborah Rundle, Mark Schroder and Alice Canton.
The artists were invited to share their work here by local artist, and regular superette customer, Melissa Laing. Most of the artists chosen for Season One and Two lived in the general area of Kelston, New Lynn and Avondale, or had a strong connection to West Auckland. Season Three was selected through an open call. The artists invited for Season Four were chosen because of their existing conceptual engagement with the key themes of the project – labour, commerce and migration as well as how we perceive and construct ideas of security and community, hyper locality in suburbia.
The project has been supported by the Nikau Superette. Seasons One and Three were supported by the Whau Local Board.
If you want to get in touch email melissa@melissalaing.com