Richard Penn
NEW ZEALAND
Born and raised in South Africa, Richard Penn currently resides in Auckland, New Zealand, where he continues to create thought-provoking works of art. As an independent artist, Penn has garnered international acclaim for his exhibitions at prestigious venues such as Gallery AOP and Nirox Gallery in Johannesburg, Blank Projects in Cape Town, and The Origins Centre Museum at the University of the Witwatersrand. His diverse portfolio spans various mediums, including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and clay and ceramics. Most recently, he was awarded the Premier Prize at the New Zealand Portage Ceramics Award in 2022. He celebrated his second New Zealand solo exhibition of ceramics and drawings at Public Record in Auckland in early 2025.
SESSION INFO
00 - 00pm
Art, Origins and Judaism
Richard Penn will talk about how the theme of origins threads through his artistic practice, beginning with a series of photographs he took of his father that helped him see not only memories of his grandfather but also a deep sense of Jewishness, as if a cultural memory was carried within the body itself. As he tracked closer to these fleeting moments, the grain of the photographs seemed to dissolve into something larger: a field of scattered marks that echoed both genetic patterns and the distant galaxies captured by modern telescopes — lending further weight to the idea that the origins of gesture, life, memory, and the cosmos are all bound together in a single, ever-transforming field.