Creative Learning Centre

Explore, experiment, create and share in the Todd Foundation Creative Learning Centre. Located on the mezzanine level, the hands-on, family-friendly space is open daily 10am–5pm and is free to visit. 

The Creative Learning Centre is a favourite of many families with its interactive and exciting installations designed especially to help tamariki discover and engage with art. 

Zinging Rhythms: Texture and Pattern

Texture and pattern can make our eyes zing and our fingers tingle! There are many ways that artists use texture and pattern – to express themselves, to mimic something in real life, to create a sense of movement or light, or simply to look bold, fun and playful. 

In this ArtLab explore with your fingers and eyes to immerse yourself in a world of textures and patterns that leap out from the page!

Most recently, ArtLab has also collaborated with Squiggla – a Gymnasium for Creative Visual Thinking. Whānau experimented with marks, dots and lines to play, make and invent – allowing exploration of their curiosity and unleashing new ideas.

As part of Toi Tū Toi Ora, Te Hā o Te Wao Nui a Tāne welcomed visitors to experience an immersive ngahere (forest, ecosystem) created by artist Charlotte Graham (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Tamaoho, Te Ākitai Waiohua, Ngāti Whanaunga, Ngāti Pāoa, Ngāti Kotimana). From December 2020 to August 2021 the textures, sounds and shapes of the ngahere took over the Creative Learning Centre.

From November 2019 to November 2020, All My Favourite Shapes by Sara Hughes used coloured magnetic shapes to make your own abstract artwork on the Gallery walls, experimenting with colour, composition, shape and pattern.

From March to November 2019, Fa’ani and RoBro present DiscoVERY was where the public was invited to take the floor and dance to a music video, wearing something different from a selection of fun garments made by the artists, coinciding with the exhibition Pacific Sisters: He Toa Tāera | Fashion Activists.

From Pillars to Posts: Project Another Country by artists and husband-and-wife team, Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan, was the first iteration in 2018/19. Using recycled cardboard boxes to create a model city, the artists invited collaboration by providing materials for Gallery visitors to produce their own small cardboard houses, which were then amassed into the installation, Pillars: Project Another Country.

The 2016/17 iteration of Once Upon a Time in ART explored historical paintings from the Mackelvie Collection, and the 2017/18 installation was The obliteration room – a wildly popular participatory exhibition for all ages by one of the world’s most popular, well-loved artists – Yayoi Kusama.

Previous installations commissioned for the space have included Reuben Paterson's Gazillion Swirl! (2011/12), Tiffany Singh's May the Rainbow Always Touch Your Shoulder (2012/13), Sean Kerr's What's It Doing? (2013/14), Wavelength (2014/15) created by Auckland Art Gallery in collaboration with AUT Colab, and Hole of Yellow Archipelago (2015/16), another collaboration, this time between artist Judy Darragh, Year 4 students at Balmoral Primary School and TurnSpace Collective from AUT University's Spatial Design department.

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