Works in Show
To be Updated After the Opening Ceremony
Artist Biography
Born in 1970 into a large Dutch immigrant family in Mosgiel, Otago, Morshuis grew up in the family hardware store, where a strong work ethic, material and tool awareness, customer service and visual displays were ingrained. Creativity wasn’t romantic or intellectual; it was hands-on, practical, and embedded in daily life.
She explored multiple creative pathways before committing fully to fine art, including Craft Design at Otago Art School, jewellery making, and graphic design. She completed a degree in Design Studies and Art History at the University of Otago, followed years later by a Master’s degree in Painting at Wimbledon Art School, University of London 2003.
A decade living and working in the UK consolidated her professional practice through sustained studio work, exhibiting with galleries, working with art consultants, and participating in international art fairs. Returning to Aotearoa, Morshuis established and ran a collective gallery in her local town for ten years before returning to art fairs and a hybrid model of exhibiting through dealer galleries and direct-from-studio contexts.
Her work is process-led and material-driven, unfolding through layering, erasing, rebuilding, and intuitive response. Conceptually, it is grounded in relationships between people and the spaces we inhabit over time, engaging with questions of human nature interrelationships and belonging.
Formerly an avid horse rider, she now experiences the landscape primarily by bike. Cycling and bikepacking shape how she thinks, notices, and remembers place. That belief in movement, connection, and lived experience also led her to co-found Art Spin with artist Jen Olson-an ongoing project recording bike journeys and conversations with artists along the way. (@the.art.spin) . She is currently represented by Blackdoor Gallery, Auckland.
Artist Statement
I’m Odelle Morshuis, an artist living and working in Bannockburn, Central Otago. I work across painting and sculpture, following curiosity and an intuitive, process-led approach. I’m interested in landscape, memory, identity, and the quiet spaces between people and place. A lot of my work comes from thinking about how we exist in spaces and how those spaces exist in us. I’m fascinated by memory and change, and how the places we move through, and the passage of time, leave marks on both the world around us and ourselves. I’m drawn to edges, thresholds, and in-between moments where things connect, shift, or sometimes break apart. My imagery often shows simple, outlined human figures. They’re anonymous, hovering between presence and absence, overlapping as one moves through space and another enters. Crowds become more like atmospheres than literal scenes, and landscapes shift and fragment with movement, weather, and memory. In some works, I trace moving figures from projected video, creating layered, fragmented lines that capture gesture, time, and change. These traces map where people have been and hint at where they might go, reflecting connection, reflection, and the weight of experience across past, present, and future. I like to make work that gives people a space to pause and notice, to linger in uncertainty, and to think about how we relate to each other, the places we live in, and the passage of time.
Heading Different Ways by Odelle Morshuis
Odelle Morshuis
Artist
