Art in the Park

From a Devonport gallery to a Test ground

Art in the Park started between two people who already sold other artists' work for a living. Sofija Matich and Cary Cochrane met working at Cochrane's Flagstaff Gallery in Devonport; Matich had spent more than fifteen years in arts management and curation, including a spell at the National Gallery in London, while Cochrane had spent over a decade backing New Zealand painters through the gallery. The stadium came into it through a casual conversation with Eden Park's chief executive, Nick Sautner, who wanted a flagship event for artists in a building that sits unused for most of the year.

The first edition opened in 2021 as part of the Elemental AKL festival, with 105 artists and a sell-out run that brought in more than 11,000 people. The shape of the thing was set there: function rooms and concourse hung as galleries, every work priced and available, and the artists standing with their own work rather than being represented by a dealer's stand. The show is now owned by The Eden Park Trust, with Matich as director and curator and Cochrane as co-founder.

Each year larger, and eventually out onto the grass

The 2022 edition ran 8–11 September with around 110 artists and more than 3,000 works, roughly 40 of those artists new to the show, and tickets then sold through Ticketek. Prints at about $100 shared the same floor as originals valued in the hundreds of thousands. Extra days, artist talks, stadium tours, a children's area and an opening-night party with live music and canapés were added that year, along with a partnership with what was then The Prince's Trust to give emerging artists a first public showing.

By September 2024, when it ran 19–22 September, the roster had passed 150 artists and a sculpture walk had been introduced along the concourse, with 90 sculptures placed at the edge of the field and 53 sculptors confirmed for that strand. The medium spread was deliberately wide: landscape painting, contemporary photography, Māori and Pasifika work, and sculpture in bronze, clay and recycled metal.

The 2025 edition, 19–21 September, put work on the turf itself for the first time through the Summerset Sculpture Walk, with more than 130 artists and 3,000-plus works inside. RNZ counted 85 sculptures standing on the grass on 18 September 2025, among them Ronald Rex, a life-size T. rex skull of roughly 200 kilograms by Brad Pollock and Annie Kuehne, finished in bronze powder and needing four or five people and a forklift to set down. Winds above 35km/h were forecast for the Thursday opening; Matich said each piece was checked for balance, weight and stability, and fixed in place. Doors ran 2pm–7.30pm on the Friday, 9.30am–6.30pm Saturday and 9.30am–4pm Sunday, with the galleries in the Grand Hall and Te Pā on level five of the North Stand.

Who gets on the walls

The 2025 roster gives a fair picture of the mix: Sofia Minson, Weston Frizzell, Jimmy James Koratorus, Janice Napper, Christian Nicholson, Anna Gibbs, Matt Griffin, Tim Christie, Juliet Best and FLOX among the established names, with Chloe Blades, Jessica Gurnsey, Tyla Bow, Xavier Heath and Josh Kiwikiwi in the emerging bracket. Bow, 23 at the time and an Elam graduate who also works as a scuba instructor, showed pieces made from recycled glass, reclaimed clay and cast metal.

The emerging-artist strand is run with The King's Trust Aotearoa New Zealand, the show's charity partner, through a free Art & Enterprise Programme covering business skills, industry insight, mentoring and coaching. One young artist is sponsored into the show each year: Shawnee Tekii in 2024, the self-taught Josh Kiwikiwi in 2025, and for 2026 Laya Rasooli, an Afghan–New Zealand artist who will give her first professional exhibition, showing abstract work alongside poetry in both the main exhibition and the MAS Emerging Artists' Gallery.

Alongside the selling floor, recent editions have carried an Art Talks programme across all three days, live demonstrations billed as Art-In-Action, a Creative Corner for children under 14, and a digital graffiti wall introduced in 2025.

2026: a principal partner, and a weather system on the pitch

On 9 June 2026 the show announced MAS, the New Zealand member-owned mutual, as principal partner on a two-year agreement covering branding, marketing and audience engagement. MAS chief marketing and distribution officer Matt Harvey framed it around creativity, connection and the role art plays in wellbeing; Sautner's line on the show has stayed consistent, that it exists to give people a different way to experience both art and Eden Park.

Eden Park confirmed the sixth edition on 10 August 2026: 12–15 November, following what it described as a sold-out 2025, with over 140 artists and more than 3,000 original works. The show's own site now puts the figure at 150-plus artists. Confirmed exhibitors include Jimmy James Koratorus, Dita Angeles, Milarky, Christian Nicholson, Tim Christie, FLOX, Logan Bow, Zoey Singh and Kayla Bacon.

The centrepiece is The Infinite Constant Front, an installation by Jesse Woolston occupying the pitch — the largest work of his career, and his first exhibition in Aotearoa after more than a decade abroad, with previous showings at the ICA in London and Christie's in New York. It runs computational physics simulations through the stadium's LED infrastructure with moving image, sound and an original music composition, cycling through standing waves, tornado dynamics, waterfalls and fire. In a curator's essay published on 1 October 2026, Matich wrote that the piece puts those forces at a proximity and scale nature would never allow, so that nature is encountered as behaviour rather than image, and said the installation expands what the show can be curatorially.

What four days at Eden Park actually involve

Entry in 2026 is by timed session rather than a single all-day ticket, which is why five dates sit on sale: an opening night on Thursday 12 November and then separate passes across Friday to Sunday. Opening night, from about $75 and listed up to $104, gives first access to the work, artist meet-and-greets, drinks and canapés, with prize draws for rooftop tours and on-site glamping attached. General admission starts around $15, with morning, afternoon, twilight and anytime options, the Friday twilight slot the cheapest and a full Friday-to-Sunday pass the dearest of the general tickets.

Everything on the walls and the grass is for sale and can be taken away the same day, with complimentary wrapping, collected the following day, or shipped at calculated cost. Entry is at Gate D on Cricket Avenue in Kingsland, parking is free on a first-come basis in the nearest lots, and the stadium is largely cashless, so a card is needed for purchases.