In 2016, The Creative Thinking Project, University of Auckland, hosted internationally acclaimed Chinese calligraphic artist Wang Dongling to create a new large-scale calligraphic work in front of a live audience at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and in collaboration with the Bank of China. The artist used ink and brush to paint the abstracted characters of the Heart Sutra on rice paper laid in the Gallery’s Atrium floor. His performative creative act was accompanied by solo cellist Catherine Kwak. Later, he joined a small group of Chartwell guests in a collaborative art game making marks directly onto the glass window panes at the Gallery’s Members Lounge. Taking turns responding to each other’s marks and working in teams, Wang Dongling and guests used a shared visual language to engage and communicate with each other. 

Director Rhana Devenport later remarked it was the first time an artist had engaged directly with the Gallery windows, something that later took on a grander scale with the current 2020 work by John Reynolds, The Violet Hour, on the South Atrium windows commissioned recently as part of current Director Kirsten Paisley’s contemporary programme.