Collecting Robin White, opening at Tauranga Art Gallery on 20 April, offers the opportunity to see works by the artist in the Tauranga Art Gallery Collection.

The Gallery has a small collection of works by Te Puke-born Dame Robin White, as well as work by Edward Bullmore and Nigel Brown.

Dame Robin trained at the University of Auckland’s School of Fine Arts, Elam, in the 1960s, with one of her teachers being Colin McCahon.

For 17 years the artist and her family lived in the Republic of Kiribati. Now based in Masterton, she regularly travels back to the Pacific Islands, where she works in collaboration with groups of local women.

In 2005 the artist visited when the Gallery was still in its project phase, and gifted an etching, Goodbye Bay of Plenty which marked the start of the Gallery Collection. She retains strong connections with the Bay of Plenty, often returning to visit family.