Michael Parekowhai

Michael Te Rakato Parekowhai (born 1968) is a New Zealand sculptor and a professor at University of Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts. He is of Ngā Ariki Kaiputahi, Ngāti Whakarongo and Pākehā descent.

Parekowhai was awarded an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award in 2001. In 2011 he represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale.

Parekowhai was born in Porirua. Both his parents were schoolteachers. He spent his childhood and attended school in Auckland's North Shore suburbs. After leaving high school, Parekowhai worked as a florist's assistant before commencing his BFA at University of Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts (1987–1990). He trained as a high-school art teacher, before returning to Elam to complete his MFA (1998–2000).

Parekowhai makes a broad range of work, across a range of media that intersects sculpture and photography.

Despite the range of Parekowhai's output, his practice is linked throughout, both stylistically – a characteristic 'gloss' of high production value – and thematically.

Curator Justin Paton writes of Parekowhai:

They [Michael Parekowhai artworks] have a way of sneaking up on you, even when they're straight ahead. Pick-up sticks swollen to the size of spears. A photograph of a stuffed rabbit who has you in his sights. A silky bouquet that rustles with politics. Seemingly serene beneath their gleaming, factory-finished surfaces, Michael Parekowhai's sculptures and photographs are in fact supremely artful objects. 'Artful' not just because they're beautifully made...but also because they manage, with a combination of slyness, charm and audacity, to spring ambushes that leave you richer.

Parekowhai's work is held in most New Zealand public gallery collections and a number of international museums.

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