Current Exhibition

Programme update

Satellite Gallery: Where to from here?

Satellite is the Depot Artspace’ sibling gallery and has been operating in Newton, an inner city arts hub, for five years. In 2011 Satellite hosted three artists’ residencies including ex-pat filmmaker and visual artist, Willie Keddell from Miami, nine exhibitions including a retrospective of the drawings of Claudia Pond Eyley, four experimental film nights, two Intrepid Music Project concerts and the three week Tribute to Rodney Wilson, who is also represented in the Cultural Icons series.

Satellite is an aesthetic exhibition space and a creative community where the human dimension of support, accessibility and inclusiveness supersedes profit. Satellite embraces the people involved in the gallery, from artist to audience, staff to volunteers, sponsor to speaker, reviewer to renovator, as integral and essential to its life and sustainability. Sustainability is not governed by a profit motive but is the outcome of service and other qualitative factors of which people are the reference point.

Satellite Gallery values the artist above its own capacity to capitalise on the artist’s work and acknowledges the creative spirit and the extent to which many artists sublimate their livelihood to the pursuit of their vocation.

Unlike the Depot, however, Satellite has never received public funding. It is privately owned and has been subsidised by its owners who have covered the costs of salaries, overheads and exhibition shortfalls. This has amounted to more than $100,000 since its establishment, no mean amount for two people on an average salary, but who have believed in the value of the arts, and artists, to society as the last bastion of human freedom.  

We have always hoped for sustainability, which for us comprises a vibrant and vital community that supports artists in mind, body and spirit, that inspires and enlivens its audience and which, as a result, supports Satellite.

In these financially challenging times, however, sustainability, according to the above vision, has become more of a struggle. When disposable income levels drop so does the purchase of ‘luxury’ items, such as art; attending to the needs of the body takes precedence over nourishing the spirit.  

After five and a half years of straddling a widening divide between vision and economic realities, between supporting artists in a complementary, aesthetically pleasing environment and keeping Satellite’s own head above water, we find ourselves in the same position as the artists we have supported. We have the same struggle to bring this necessary aesthetic dimension into the lives of people and the level of recognition is in general limited. Consequently, we live in a society that judges wealth and reward by an overabundance of commodities.

Satellite’s intention has been to expose and redress this fallacious perception and the subsequent imbalance that causes us to remain so aesthetically impoverished.

It is perhaps difficult for people to embrace the fact that Satellite is a gallery informed by its philosophy rather than by the economic imperative.  Because it sits outside recognisable structures such as dealer galleries and community art galleries there are few reference points by which to identify its place and its raison d’etre.

If artists and audience were able to understand the vision that inspired Satellite and the philosophy that has guided its development there could be a greater sense of unity and community; that each of us has an equal part in supporting and celebrating the arts in NZ. Satellite’s part is to provide the environment where this is able to take place.

Without mutual and active commitment to a vision, the burden of responsibility is often carried alone and Satellite has suffered this more often than not over its lifespan.

Our question of you is, if Satellite is valued as an means of support for artists, if its beautiful environment is considered an important exhibiting opportunity, if its values are important in a society dominated by the economic imperative in which exploitation is often a feature, how can we together work to make it sustainable?

We would love to hear your ideas or to receive submissions for use that takes account of its philosophy and contributes towards its sustainability.
Please contact Lynn Lawton at 09 9632328 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it