• Margaret Silverwood

These pen and ink line drawings are an attempt to find out what I really think and feel, the stuff that gets ignored when your brain is just trying to help you survive external reality. A character had emerged in earlier drawings that I realised must be me... I used this character as a starting point, and each time I drew I would find out what was going to happen to me that day. Which had already happened, I just didn't know it yet.

I drew the book "Waldoland" the same way. Each day I sat down to draw a page, that page was a reflection of what was right for the story on that day. I wanted to let things happen, rather than plan. The result is hard to categorise, but if I had to, I might call it (with some glee) a "spiritual adventure story".

• Catherine Macdonald

We are social animals living in communities of strangers, this leads to all types of interactions, some brief and yet memorable others so frequent they become overlooked. It takes all sorts to make up a community, some of them are just people who pass us by in the street, people you only know to nod a greeting at but have enough clues to start to construct a narrative around. These people can trigger memories of past pleasures or pains and spark anticipation and speculation of future ones to come.

They say life is a journey, so that being the case, each day we travel a little further on it, brushing up against people and places that can change our course for better or worse. From these interactions we construct stories our own or others; they can be based on speculation, fact, gossip or manipulated truths. There is truth somewhere in these works.

There are some certainties, in our own way, we are going places. And for better or worse, that’s the fact of the matter.

• Ben Reid

Ben Reid is a Christchurch-based printmaker whose interest in the fragile relationship that New Zealanders have with the natural environment and its ecosystems is complex. There are no easy solutions.

Since 2005, the subject of Reid’s prints have encompassed hunting trophies, Victorian wallpaper patterns, native flora and fauna, exotic predators, Butcher shop signs, rabbits, Beswick ducks, wild deer, a lighthouse keeper’s cat and birds such as the Brown Teal and the Chatham Island Taiko. Reid brings together a myriad of references that draw attention to the complexity of a relationship with the natural world that has been both exploitative and beneficial to humanity. Yet Reid’s images retain a faith in the redemption of this relationship with nature.