The Vessel

Open from Sat 21 Feb – Sun 14 Jun 2025.

Step inside a dream stitched from memory, movement and magic.

In this extraordinary exhibition by Ōtautahi-based artist and designer Steven Junil Park 박준일, garments become vessels—of grief, of joy, of resistance and ritual. Known for his sculptural costumes created for musicians, dancers, poets and underground parties—including Aldous Harding, Jahra Wasasala, Jo Randerson, and Nathan Joe—Park conjures not just clothes, but entire worlds.

This is no fashion show. No theatre set. Instead, the gallery transforms into a luminous, otherworldly cosmos where suspended garments hover like spirits or spells. Videos, sound, scent and choreography breathe life back into the cloth, inviting audiences into a collaborative creative realm built on instinct, relationships, and care.

Park’s practice defies genre and hierarchy, embracing what he calls “ungovernable creativity.” Here, making is a form of connection. Each piece pulses with life beyond its making.

The artist becomes not just a maker, but an oracle of intangible realms—an empty vessel for communion with amorphous, intangible spaces we cannot name, but feel deep in our bones.