VILAURA x Ray Haydon

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.

Ray Haydon

Ray Haydon is a contemporary New Zealand artist whose work explores form, movement, and emotional energy through abstraction. His practice is intuitive and expressive, often inviting the viewer to experience feeling before meaning.

I met Ray over a year ago, but I had never seen his work out in the wild before! It wasn’t until 2025 that I noticed one of his elegant works appear on New Zealand’s Best Homes with Phil Spencer (Season 2, Episode 1). Featured in the Hahei House designed by Paul Clarke of Studio2, Ray’s sculpture feels almost inseparable from the timber architecture almost as though it belongs to the house itself. While I was disappointed that Phil didn’t pause to acknowledge the piece, I felt a quiet thrill in recognising it instantly as Ray’s work.

Spring

Spring has a sense of lift and release in the work and is a visual expression of freedom and optimism. Ray has spoken about his enthusiasm for green as a new colour when creating the piece, a sense of freshness.

The work feels alive… buoyant.

It doesn’t sit heavily in a space; instead, it draws the eye upward, suggesting growth, motion, and the promise of something new. When asked to translate the work into another sense, Ray, a man of few words, promptly described it like drinking champagne… effervescent.

VILAURA - Marlborough Rosé Extra Brut Rosé Méthode Traditionnelle2022

The wine paired with Spring was the VILAURA 2022 Marlborough Rosé, disgorged in Spring and perfect for this artwork.

VILAURA is an independent New Zealand sparkling house founded outside the constraints of corporate winemaking. In just a few years, they’ve made a significant impact onf the local wine scene, collecting gold medals, trophies, and multiple Wine of the Show awards.

What connects Spring and VILAURA Rosé isn’t just effervescence…it’s energy.

Both the artwork and the wine move upward. Both feel light yet intentional. Both are expressions of independence and optimism, freshness and freedom, made with care and conviction rather than excess.

Together, they speak the same language … one of renewal, lift, and quiet joy. A pairing that doesn’t try to impress, but instead invites you to pause, look up, and feel uplifted.

- Renée Dale

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RAY HAYDON
Seventy Five

11th Nov - 7th Dec 2025

Sanderson are pleased to present the exhibition Seventy Five by Ray Haydon. Celebrating his seventy fifth year the exhibition explores the artist's dynamic and varied oeuvre spanning over two decades.

Haydon’s practice is celebrated for its deep engagement with the physical and conceptual properties of space. His works are held in many private collections worldwide, and have featured in major sculpture exhibitions in Aotearoa including NZ Sculpture OnShore, Shapeshifter Wellington, NZ Sculpture on the Gulf, and the Aotearoa Art Fair Sculpture Court. Haydon’s works have been featured in publications including Art News, Art New Zealand, ArtZone, The New Zealand Herald, Urbis, Denizen and Sothebys magazine.

 
Read more here.