Mercy Pictures

On the 16th of October 2020, Mercy Pictures opened People of Colour, an exhibition authored by the gallery itself, consisting of hundreds of small flags printed in full colour on fabric and arranged in grids on the gallery walls. These ranged from national and political to ideological and even of fictional origins, such as the flags of Gondor and Mordor featured in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films.

An essay by British writer and philosopher Nina Power was included as the exhibition text,^[7] though Power was not involved in creating the artworks themselves. In the essay she commented, ‘Flags have become emojis, tiny rectangular blocks next to names or pseudonyms. If we shrink the flag, do we diminish its power or expand it? People of Colour at Mercy Pictures engages in a semiotic provocation both at the level of scale and the level of meaning.'’^[8]

Near the end of the exhibition's run, two individuals wearing white face paint removed one of the flags from the wall and stole it.^[9] Some days after the exhibition closed, activist group Tamaki Anti-Fascist Action made an Instagram post labelling the exhibition 'horrific' and demanding that Mercy Pictures '1. Remove the exhibition immediately and apologise for putting it up. 2. Refuse towork with Nina Power in the future. 3. No longer platform fascist and other far-right figures and symbols in the future.' ^[10]

Following this, an open letter written by Quishile Sharon, Jasmin Singh and Anevili was circulated online.^[11] The letter echoed the sentiments of the Anti-Fascist Action post, seconding the demands made and adding their own, including that Mercy Pictures 'apologise to the tribe Ngāi Tūhoe for displaying their flags without permission, without the intent of their original purpose and amongst symbols of white supremacy', that the gallery 'de-platform', and that the directors 'actively engage in accountability with the communities they have harmed...through a third-party mediation process.' ^[12]

The open letter also made demands on other individuals not formally associated with Mercy Pictures, such as Auckland gallerists Michael Lett (gallery) and Tim Melville - who had posted a photo of Burt, himself and Lett attending the exhibition - insisting that they apologise for their 'platforming' of the exhibition. This led to Lett, Melville and others issuing public apologise in which they stated, among other things, that they had no association with the gallery or its directors. Around this time, the front door of the gallery was vandalised with a large spray-painted swastika.

In the wake of the open letter, a post was made on the Tāmaki Anti-Fascist Action page signed by Ngan-Kee, in which he apologised for the 'harm and re-traumatisation brought about by the exhibition' and declared his intention to 'enter face-to-face accountability processes', calling on the other directors to do the same. ^[13] Several days later, a statement was released by Mercy Pictures, stating the gallery's belief in the importance of freedom of expression.

Over the following weeks, further statements denouncing the exhibition and gallery were issued by several high-profile organisations, including Auckland Pride, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland arts institution Artspace NZ, and the University of Auckland, in addition to a number of small fellow galleries and artist-run spaces. The New Zealand Jewish Council released a statement claiming that neo-Nazi imagery has a 'well-established reference that can leave people feeling vulnerable', and that 'if it is being presented as art, or as part of an exhibition, it needs to be handled sensitively and contextualised'. ^{[14] [15]}

Three days after the exhibition closed, the story was picked up by the New Zealand media, with articles published by the New Zealand Herald^[16], Stuff^[17], The Spinoff, and Radio New Zealand^[18], including an op-ed by prominent Auckland gallerist Sarah Hopkinson, who criticised the exhibition, stating 'if art is a space of radical imagining, surely we can imagine placing reasonable limitations on the expression of toxic views.' ^[9]

Support came from John Hurrell, editor and founder of EyeContact, a long-running online art review and commentary platform, who supported the idea that Mercy Pictures could be provocative and argued for their right to stand up against censorship.^[19] Following Hurrell's article, a number of writers asked for their work to be removed from EyeContact's site. Other writers made their own defences of the gallery, and criticised the negative press, including American writer and former editor of IM-1776 magazine DC Miller, in an article where he described the backlash as an example of 'a conception of art explicitly subordinated to ideological criteria. Here again one discovers the assertion that the act of exhibiting a political symbol in an art gallery equates to promoting it, as if Andy Warhol was promoting Maoism with his giant silkscreens of the Great Helmsman.' ^[20] A number of group meetings on the exhibition and the ensuing fallout were held online and in person. ^[9]

Mercy Pictures continued to have further exhibitions following People of Colour before finally closing its physical location at the end of 2021, although its social media page continues to operate. In 2026, Nina Power published an article revisiting the exhibition and backlash.^[21]

An archive of the gallery's exhibition history is available at Contemporary Art Library.