Gina Kiel
Tidal Bodies
22 February – 15 March 2025
Gina Kiel’s first solo exhibition, Tidal Bodies, explores themes of cyclical change and transformation. Free-flowing sketches are refined into paintings, as fluid forms grow into entities of their own. Through these paintings, Kiel is channelling archetypal beings who pulse with constant motion. Optical patterns are paired with soft, introspective features, giving shape and colour to new ways of seeing.
With the inclusion of a gallery mural, Tidal Bodies marks a pivotal moment in Kiel’s artistic practice, embodying a more intuitive approach to painting. Her work has evolved alongside personal milestones, from the early days of motherhood to this current stage of integration. What began as a narrative of separation—painted forms split in two—has transformed into a celebration of wholeness and the interconnectedness of all things.
Tidal Bodies refers to the rhythms of the ocean mirroring the fluid nature of the body. Kiel’s work displays reverence for this ongoing motion of life—an ebb and flow of experiences—and how these forces shape and reshape us.
Read our kōrero with Gina here and The Post’s write-up on Tidal Bodies here.
INSTALLATION VIEWS
ARTWORKS
THE ARTIST
To view Gina Kiel’s works is to get lost in the rhythm she creates with each wave and stripe. A regenerative cadence echoing nature, body and spirit. Whether intimate paintings, large-scale murals or handpoke tattoos, the feeling is the same. Bold, graphic and alluring.
Despite Kiel’s vivid black and whites, bending and contorting into large hypnotic swirls, there is a delicacy in her pieces. Each face or hand becomes rendered with softness - a perfected navigation of light and shadow. The tip of a nose, the point of a crescent moon or the smooth muscles of a horse, all sharp and glossy - their expressions content, peaceful, contemplative. Based in Te Whanganui a Tara, exhibiting independently as well as a member of the renowned Dreamgirls Art Collective - Gina Kiel’s exploration of transformation and renewal asks us to sit on the edge of contemplation. Caught between the worlds of deities and concrete alike.