This past weekend, central Wellington became the stage for a new gathering: Common Material, a three-day biennial celebrating the city's creative culture, anchored around the reopening of City Gallery.

Four of Wellington's leading fashion labels — Yu Mei, twenty-seven names, JPalm and Salon — showed runway collections inside the gallery's main hall, while designer talks paired Dayne Johnston with novelist Emily Perkins.

City Gallery has been closed for seismic remediation for more than two years. Its reopening, with no permanent collection on the walls and the building itself foregrounded, drew nearly 9,000 visitors across the weekend.

Co-curator Dan Ahwa said the biennial aimed to make a long-term claim on the civic square. "Wellington has always been a city that designs for itself. Common Material is about saying that out loud."