What remains

Solo Exhibition at the Suter Art Gallery, Nelson, New Zealand. 6th December 2025 - 8th March 2026

During 2024 and 2025, Chandler re-imagined her Landscapes of Loss series with new works and re-worked artworks. What Remains was exhibited at the Suter Art Gallery in Nelson, late 2025. This on-going series will be exhibited at Ashburton Art Gallery in 2028.

Wall text by Dr. Kyla Mackenzie, December 2025
Nelson-based artist Lisa Chandler (MFA, Hons) explores ongoing themes of human compassion, social fracture, and loss in What Remains. This show draws from her Landscapes of Loss show at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery (2022) and includes reworked compositions and recent work exploring the materiality of new media.

A residency in Germany in 2016 saw Chandler take up motifs of urban ruins, social injustice, and geo-political unrest. A moral, universal imperative continues to inflect several of her works. The human potential for compassion and impulse to remember those lost is seen in the architectonic Seven Works of Mercy (2022-2025), inspired by the religious panels: Seven Works of Mercy (1504) by the Dutch Master of Alkmaar.

Despite the emotive content, Chandler’s imagery has a remoteness due to her formal preoccupations. Creating and responding to values such as texture, tone, and form, puts her in a meditative, reflexive space far from crises in the news. The resulting abstractions and ambiguities, however, align with her interest in evoking a sense of the universal human collective and the best impulses that unite it.

Read the review Steve Austin, Art New Zealand Number 198 / Winter 2026

FORGOTTEN, 2021, Diptych 120 x 180cm, Acrylic on Plywood Panels

A BLEAK EXISTENCE, 2022-2025, 170 x 220cm, Acrylic on Canvas

THE SEVEN WORKS OF MERCY, after the Master of Alkmaar 1504, 2022-2025, Septych, each panel 170 x 93cm, Acrylic on Plywood Panels

SELECTED VISITOR COMMENTS

  • “Your paintings are wonderful, you’re a great storyteller and I love the social support message as it’s needed so much in these strange times we are living in” New Zealand

  • “This collection really makes you pay attention to the details, especially those works on plywood. An amazing exhibition of grief, tragedy and hope” USA

  • “Absolute incredible artwork, with the drawn focus on just the right topics - it really renews the feeling of how f’d up this world can be. Be Grateful for all that we have” Germany

  • “Through the layers of history, landscape, conditioning, culture and ideas . . . illusions you could call them - we are human. Thanks for peeling back the layers, for showing the truth Lisa, mesmerising work” Slovenia

  • “Deeply moving - each work speaks so much, beautiful and poignant. Thank you for sharing”

  • “Inspiring and great to see a moral compass of compassion and a voice for change”

  • “Your work ‘Aftermath’ brought back painful memories of the Christchurch earthquake. Incredibly stunning work and very touching. Thank you” New Zealand