Chris Charteris

Name
Chris Charteris
Date of birth
1966
Place of birth
Auckland (region)/New Zealand
Gender
Male
Biography
Born in 1966 in Auckland, New Zealand, Chris Charteris is a pre-eminent Pacific artist of Kiribati, Fijian and English descent. Since 2002, he has lived and worked in Kūaotunu on the Coromandel Peninsula. Self-described as a ‘beach-comber-cum-professional scavenger’, Charteris is acclaimed for his deep respect for and command of natural materials sourced locally, such as rock, pounamu and whalebone. He has built a significant body of work across a wide range of media including sculpture, jewellery and carving.
At the heart of Charteris’s practice is a continuing exploration of his cultural identity, which is characterised by a constant reconciliation between different cultural influences. He was adopted at birth into a Pākehā family and, until his mid-twenties, believed his paternal heritage was Māori. Discovering his Kiribati and Fijian heritage in 1995 marked a turning point in his practice towards Polynesian forms, traditional tools, ceremonial objects and adornments which have become an endless source of interrogation and contemplation. Charteris’s interest in reconciling his cultural background led him to develop a concept of ‘universality’, which references the incorporation of a number of material cultures from the Pacific region and the continual evolution of these forms within his work.
Charteris’s career spans three decades. Since the 1980s, he has exhibited nationally and internationally in major exhibitions such as The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (2019), Sea Crossing, Horniman Museum London (2019), Art of the Pacific, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, Continuity and Change, British Museum, London (both 2008). His work is represented in private and public collections including Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, The Dowse Art Museum, British Museum, and Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.