Chris Heaphy is a painter of many parts. He has made work that is both abstract and figurative. But recently his visual vocabulary has been utterly consistent – a lexicon of shapes and symbols to do with a life that crosses cultures from Pakeha and Maori into Asia, that blends the domestic with the international, and that acknowledges both our current moment and also our colonial past. He is a graduate of the Canterbury School of Art at Ilam, and has work in the collections of Auckland City Art Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna O Waiwhetu. A significant recent commission is the painted fencing and planted whare outside the broken Cathedral in Christchurch’s Square. Heads in top hats, floral motifs, crutches and forked tongues seem appropriate symbols, amongst others, to adorn the barrier between the Church, its people and progress right now.