The art of collage is deceptively simple, yet in the hands of a great artist the juxtaposition of images can give rise to illuminating new meanings. British artist John Stezaker is renowned as one of the world’s leading exponents of the form, and since the 1970s has produced a distinctive body of work. This exhibition curated by City Gallery Wellington’s Robert Leonard features dozens of striking collages, as well as found-object sculptures and the collage film Crowd.

For more than 40 years the self-confessed ‘vandal and thief’ has been collecting photographs and subjecting them to all kinds of treatment—cutting and slicing, grafting them in uncanny or provocative ways—and along the way has reinvented the art of collage. Like Dr Frankenstein but with a better sense of humour, Stezaker stitches together dead images to give them new life.