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Heaven’s Blade unfolds in a speculative world where the sun has become too intense for people to spend extended periods outdoors. Juliet Carpenter’s new film, shot across Hawke’s Bay and Central Otago, follows two young girls in a multi-generational household as they navigate their relationship to light, visibility, and the consequences of exposure. The film’s observational approach traces the repetition and rituals of domestic life, letting unease surface gradually through what stays unseen and unspoken—the hostile brightness beyond the walls of the home, and the family matriarch confined to a darkened room within.
Carpenter was Hastings Art Gallery’s artist-in-residence over summer 2025–26, based in Hawke’s Bay during the film’s pre-production. Her practice explores how images, perception, and subjectivity are constructed and mediated through film technologies—here, through black-and-white photography, infrared imaging, surveillance systems, and spatial design. The film also draws on the tradition of settler-colonial landscape painting in Aotearoa New Zealand and on what art historian Francis Pound called “The Regional Real”: the way in which the idea of a specific and intense quality of “New Zealand light” made its way into the canon of twentieth century landscape painting.
Heaven’s Blade premieres as two unique exhibitions, presented concurrently at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery and Dunedin Public Art Gallery during the summer of 2026–27. In Heretaunga Hastings, the film screens across a triptych-like screen that responds to the almost ecclesiastical architecture of the gallery. Behind the screen, a peephole offers a glimpse into an enclosed domestic scene. Carpenter has collaborated with artist Biljana Popovic to expand the cinematic environment across adjoining spaces, guiding a transition from the natural light of the foyer into a darkened interior, where ecological, historical, and psychological forces converge.
Juliet Carpenter (b. 1990, Waipukurau, Central Hawke’s Bay) is an artist and filmmaker from Aotearoa New Zealand, currently living and working in Germany. Carpenter holds a BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland (2014) and graduated from the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main in 2022. In 2024, Carpenter was nominated for the Walters Prize for her outstanding contribution to contemporary art in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Heaven’s Blade was developed with the support of Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa and completed with special thanks to Rhys Howard and the Gow Family Foundation.
WhenSaturday 26 September, 10:00am to 4:00pm
Tuesday 29 September, 10:00am to 4:00pm
CostRestrictions: All Ages
Free
WhereHastings Art Gallery, Hastings, Hawke's Bay / Gisborne
201 Eastbourne St East, Hastings, Hawke's Bay / Gisborne
customerservices@wairoadc.govt.nz
+64 6 838 7309
+64 6 838 8874
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PO Box 54, Wairoa 4160, Hawke's Bay
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