Not a solitary feeling is a group exhibition bringing perspectives from the environmental humanities to Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection. Including a selection of loaned and collection works, the exhibition draws attention to perceived boundaries between human and more-than-human, planet and atmosphere. These works may prompt us to think about things which are amorphous and immediate—wind, weather, water, and the air in-between. To think about bodies which we might not always be able to see but can sense and feel, and beings which swoop suspended in space. Not a solitary feeling pays attention to the atmosphere as a commons and invites us to consider what it means to become kin, to be a community of which this planet is a part. To be filled with energy. Together these works reframe the past, allow us to hold the world before us in the present, and propose radical alterations to how we might think, anticipate, and imagine our future.

Not a solitary feeling completes a curatorial collaboration between Professor of Art History and Environmental Humanities, Susan Ballard, and former Kaiwhakarākei, Curator Collections, Sophie Thorn. Conceived as chapters in an ever-evolving conversation which began with Listening Stones Jumping Rocks in 2021 and Folded Memory in 2023, this exhibition series unpacks the possibilities for an environmentally-considered art history of Aotearoa.