Colere x Mickey Smith

Each month, Boutique Connection supports Sanderson Contemporary Art’s exhibition openings.

This is a collaboration of wine and art pairing where we pair a handcrafted New Zealand wine with the artist’s hero piece. The project explores how taste and texture can echo a visual experience and perhaps even enhance it.

I’m exploring the non-verbal dialogue between art and wine and pairing each artist’s hero piece with a wine that echoes its mood, energy, and emotion.

The aim is to translate visual expression into taste, inviting viewers to experience the artwork through another sensory lens. Each match is intuitive and collaborative, celebrating both the artist’s vision and the craft of our boutique producers.

Mickey Smith

I first met Mickey Smith about two years ago at Sanderson.

Before we even started talking about art, I noticed her because she had an awesome hairstyle ... an undercut. I loved it immediately because I had one too! What started as a casual comment turned into a surprisingly emotional conversation about why we had both chosen to wear our hair that way, and the personal experiences sitting quietly underneath it.

I remember walking away from that interaction with Mickey thinking what a powerhouse. What a strong woman. What a thoughtful human. What a talent.

So when Lydia connected us again to pair a wine with Mickey’s latest exhibition, Sacrosanct, it genuinely felt like an honour. It felt less like simply matching a wine to an artwork, and more like two worlds thoughtfully coming together. It felt authentic and real, and tangible.

Untitled Vol. XII, Strahov

Mickey’s work explores books, archives, libraries, and the physical weight of cultural memory. For this exhibition, she photographed within Prague’s Strahov Monastery, creating images dense with texture, silence, and accumulated time. As Mickey described them, the works carry “big, gritty weight” and feel “tactile” and “dead quiet.”

When I first saw Untitled Vol. XII, Strahov, 2026, the shelves of aging books seemed to transform into something beyond objects ... part of the building itself, almost geological. The works appear musty and tactile, yet somehow preserved from decay, creating this beautiful tension between entropy and permanence.

Standing in the gallery discussing the work together, there was a shared feeling that this pairing needed to reward patience and contemplation rather than immediacy.

Colere - Ashmore Vineyard Pinot Noir 2020

As we discussed the work, I kept coming back to one wine ... Colere - Ashmore Vineyard Pinot Noir 2020

The wine immediately mirrored the emotional atmosphere of the piece for me. There were these autumnal, forest floor characters alongside notes that reminded me of old paper, tobacco, timber shelves, and bound leather. Emma Jenkins MW described the wine as showing “bacon fat, mocha and tobacco whole-bunch notes” alongside wild berries and pomegranate, with the 100% whole bunch fermentation adding “a little extra seasoning.”

Standing together at the gallery with the works hanging on the walls and a glass of the Colere in hand ... we all realised, this was the one.

Both the work and the wine asked for the same thing from us ... slowing down. Intention. Thoughtfulness. Time. Both unfolded through texture, detail, and emotional weight.

It was sacrosanct.

Enjoy.

- Renée Dale

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Mickey Smith
Sacrosanct

29 May - 21 June 2026

Sanderson are pleased to present the exhibition Sacrosanct 

“To live means to leave traces.” - Walter Benjamin

Mickey Smith is deeply attentive to the fragility of knowledge systems, their inevitable decay and their survival. For more than two decades the American-born, Aotearoa-based artist has closely examined libraries in the US, New Zealand and the Pacific.

Now, with Sacrosanct, we see an evolution from Smith’s award-winning photographic series Volume. With this expansion on her decades-long inquiry into the physical and social significance of texts and archives, she turns her gaze to libraries cloistered in monasteries.

It is tempting to picture the artist as a young girl in 1970s Minnesota sitting among the stacks in her local library, her nose in a book. The truth is a little less tidy. Smith didn’t find herself in an academic environment until she entered university. Books, to her, were merely utilitarian. So, what drew her to a theological library in the English Midlands with 229 hand-transcribed Latin manuscripts dating back to the 12th century? 

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Read more here.

Wiese Family Wines x Stephen Ellis

Each month, Boutique Connection sponsors Sanderson Contemporary Art’s exhibition openings.

This is a collaboration of wine and art pairing where we pair a handcrafted New Zealand wine with the artist’s hero piece. The project explores how taste and texture can echo a visual experience and perhaps even enhance it.

I’m exploring the non-verbal dialogue between art and wine and pairing each artist’s hero piece with a wine that echoes its mood, energy, and emotion.

The aim is to translate visual expression into taste, inviting viewers to experience the artwork through another sensory lens. Each match is intuitive and collaborative, celebrating both the artist’s vision and the craft of our boutique producers.

Stephen Ellis

Stephen Ellis’ drawings are monochromatic, technically masterful, yet warm and nostalgic. Every object feels carefully considered, every shadow purposeful. Rather than simply depicting a scene, Stephen creates spaces filled with memory, where familiar objects invite us to reflect on the stories they carry.

For this exhibition, Undertow, Stephen continues exploring ideas of place, nostalgia, and the subtle pull of memory. They ask us to spend time looking, discovering small details that might otherwise be overlooked.

Red Boy St Clair

Stephen describes the work as "a very nostalgic piece... based on the composition of Thomas Lawrence's portrait The Red Boy or Master Charles Lambton (1825)." That connection between past and present became the starting point for the pairing.

Although the work is rendered almost entirely in lamp black and subtle tones, it never feels heavy. The familiar objects become symbols rather than possessions, each one holding fragments of memory and place.

Wiese Family Wines Pinot Noir 2024

The wine comes from Wiese Family Wines in Central Otago... a young couple from two very different parts of the world... South Africa and Argentina... who fell in love with Pinot Noir in Sonoma before eventually finding home in Central Otago.

This Pinot Noir was a surprise to me. Rather than the dark, brooding fruit often associated with Central Otago, it sits in a brighter register. Think red plum, raspberry and red peach skin, carried by fine tannins that give the wine shape without weight.

Then, just as the fruit begins to settle, another layer appears... a gravitas emerges with a savoury edge and a delicate saline finish that lingers.

Stephen's drawing gradually uncovers memories hidden within ordinary objects, while the Pinot slowly builds across the palate like a moody orchestral piece... gathering depth before reaching crescendo.

There's also a shared sense of nostalgia. Stephen looks back through art history and personal memory, while the Pinot feels familiar yet unpredictable.

Enjoy!

- Renée Dale

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Stephen Ellis
Undertow | Hvac

29th April - 24th May 2026

Sanderson are pleased to present the exhibition Undertow | Hvac by Stephen Ellis.

 The exhibition features a continuation of the artist’s Undertow series, as well as showcasing the beginning of an exciting new series by the artist titled ‘Hvac’.

 During his 2025 residency at the Dunedin School of Art Ellis initiated the suite of drawings under the title - Undertow. The scenes in these drawings are set on Ōtepoti’s Saint Clair Beach, a formative coastal landscape from the artist’s childhood.

 The brooding skies depicted quote the work of of Colin McCahon, who like the artist was born in Ōtepoti and studied at the Dunedin School of Art.

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Read more here.