John Hurrell – 19 August, 2026

Several rooms of lusciously coloured photographs of animals and plants (with camera /lens equipment details carefully noted) make up this enticing internationally sourced show that comes from the Natural History Museum in London, but now presented at Auckland’s War Memorial Museum. All sorts of strangely shaped creatures and plants from far beyond Aotearoa are featured, ranging from large to very small, and presented through seductive ‘calendar-style’ photography that is put on light-boxes that usually exploit richly intense saturated colour. The transparent presentations are visually engrossing. They tend to glow.

Scattered through three galleries, the show’s many images are elegant and tasteful—though occasionally perhaps a little cute or sweet. However, the exhibition goes beyond aesthetic delectation, as story-telling about the processes of ‘nature’ is alluded to but never as bombarding info overkill.

The sense of wondrous enigmatic mystery generated by the labours of this large curated group of shutterbugs is maintained. Each shot contains very interesting zoological or botanical information about the included various life forms’ shape, form and function that often makes you insatiably curious. As I have a big personal interest in herpetology and ornithology, my favourites tend to be small, feathered, scaly and slimy. 

As exhibits many of these works are no great shakes as ‘art’ philosophically. They are sometimes sort of corny. Nevertheless you still buy into them, for they are utterly absorbing through their drama, sensuality and rarity. There are a lot of intriguing exposures, heaps of pleasurable surprises in their detail, and the knowledge they impart about the wide wide (often miniature) world is thoroughly engaging.

John Hurrell

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