Art in the Park Brings 3,000 Works to Auckland’s Eden Park

More than 140 artists have transformed Auckland’s Eden Park stadium into a sprawling gallery for the sixth annual Art in the Park, showcasing over 3,000 original works across the concourses, exhibition spaces, and playing field, 1News reported.

The national stadium, more commonly associated with rugby and cricket matches, is hosting the event for a weekend that features works priced anywhere from $50 to more than $100,000. Organisers said that the sixth iteration of the exhibition follows previous years that drew 11,000 visitors, contributing to a total of more than 54,000 attendees since the event’s inception.

Among the exhibitors is 26-year-old Laya Rasooli, whose abstract paintings explore themes of identity, displacement, and belonging.

“This has been huge for me, like being with these many artists, these many professional artists that have been given their life to this. It’s an incredible opportunity.”

Rasooli told 1News.

When creating her pieces, such as Tree of Life and Who Am I?, Rasooli pairs her visual art with poetry to articulate the hidden roots and cultural layers beneath the surface. She also hopes her presence on-site encourages other Afghan women facing severe restrictions in their homeland.

“For me as an Afghan girl, I see the opportunities that I have in New Zealand that most people in Afghanistan don’t and especially our girls in Afghanistan don’t.”

Rasooli told 1News.

Occupying a drastically different scale on the Eden Park field is internationally acclaimed New Zealand artist Jesse Woolston, who returned from Los Angeles to debut the largest work of his career. Entitled The Infinite Constant Front, the large-scale digital installation merges nature and computational art to project moving imagery of storms, ocean waves, and waterfalls across the venue.

“Throughout the last 10 years of working internationally, I’ve always wanted to come back to New Zealand and do something in my home.”

Woolston told 1News.

The weekend exhibition highlights a broader operational shift for the stadium, according to Eden Park chief executive Nick Sautner. Sautner told 1News that roughly 70 percent of current venue activities were absent from the business model a decade ago, with total events generating more than $1 billion in economic benefit since the Rugby World Cup.

Art in the Park runs through the weekend, featuring artist discussions, specialist talks, and interactive creative spaces alongside the thousands of works available for purchase.

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