Jack Trolove is an artist who uses his painting practice to explore and uplift states of transition and in-between-ness.

Jack has worked as a practicing artist for over twenty years, showing nationally and internationally in artist run spaces, public museums, and dealer galleries. He’s currently working on a doctorate exploring painting as trans or threshold-work, through the Celtic traditions of keening. Earlier in his career, Jack produced a collaborative show about gender based violence, for the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, and later was awarded an international artist residency from the Scottish Arts Council.

Alongside his work in the arts, Jack has held various community and strategic roles in mental health, homelessness, suicide prevention, and within the LGBTQIA+ justice and advocacy space.

He currently lives and works in Te Tai Tokerau, on the beautiful muddy waters of the Kaipara harbour.

Jack’s words cast a spell, conjuring a future that draws from a shape-shifting past. A past that expands and transcends gender. A past that does not know the constraints and repression of a binary viewpoint. Jack imagines a world that respects the inherent value and ancient wisdoms of liminal spaces, and draws us all into a better future. 

Around the perimeter of Jack’s disc are tiny numbers, like breadcrumbs, leading us along the path and providing clues to decoding the message. 

Jack says “I found it hard to find my way into words so I had to start with colour.  The pigment codes refer to a series of paint colours which are beautiful hues between the primaries and binaries. Violets, emerald greens, indigos and ochre-yellows and others. All colours that can only be found and seen through their trans-ness or between-ness or mixed-ness. These are the supporting song in visual language. I’m thinking of them like a recipe for the spell, or a visual echo, or a waiata tautoko.”