ReFrame: Celebrating the first MFA programme cohort from VUW’s Visual Narrative Lab
Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington is Aotearoa New Zealand’s globally ranked capital city university.
In 2024, to support growing interest in visual storytelling, Te Herenga Waka introduced the Visual Narrative Lab, a creative initiative to explore visual storytelling across various media. While not bound to a specific physical space, the Lab serves as a conceptual hub, uniting writers and designers working in comics, animation, games, and more to shape the future of storytelling in our media-rich environment. Its mission is to enhance the study and application of these mediums in research, education, and industry, welcoming cross-disciplinary projects that include world-building, video game writing, and tabletop role-playing design.
“In recent years, the Universities’ Design School has become a hotbed of research and creative activity around visual storytelling,” says Dylan Horrocks, one of the lab’s founding members and a renowned graphic novelist.
August 2025 marks a milestone for the Visual Narrative Lab, as students from the MFA in Creative Practice (Visual Narrative) debut their work in the 2025 ReFrame postgraduate exhibition. As part of the Narrative Design course, students explored hybrid storytelling through zines, games, installations, and animation—cross-pollinating words and images into strange new forms of surreal and deeply personal expression.
From dancing photo-poems and Māori pirate maps to lyrical video games and philosophical animations, the exhibited work showcases the rich range of narrative practices taught in the Lab. This moment not only celebrates the students’ creativity, but also highlights the growing relevance of visual storytelling across design, media, and the culture of Aotearoa.
At the 2025 ReFrame postgrad exhibition you can expect to see:
Thumbelina’s Collectible Teddy Bear, by Alyse Gillespie
Exploring the evolving forms of love in Hans Christian Andersen’s Thumbelina through soft
sculpture and mixed media. Each bear embodies a stage of Thumbelina’s journey: from the warmth of maternal love that brings her into existence, to a flimsy, surface-level affection based on appearances, and then a rigid, transactional kind of love driven by security rather than emotion. The tactile choices of plush fabrics, cracking clay, and delicate card which mirrors the emotional tone of each phase. In a reimagining of the fairytale’s ending, the nal bear represents a departure from traditional romantic endings, celebrating instead the power of self-love and autonomy. The collection invites viewers to reflect on the ways love is offered, received, and ultimately chosen.
The Diana Suite, by Grace Clark
Exploring themes of unstable memory, magic and folklore The Diana Suite is an illustrated horror novella-follows immortal, human manifestations of animal tricksters that scheme, make deals and compete. This work of experimental fiction experiments promises to excite the reader and leave them with questions about their place in the story of the world.
The Diana Suite is presented with sections of prose intertwined with sections of illustration that work in tandem to communicate the story and character perspectives. Its world is complex and rich with nuanced characters. The illustrations will be a mix of digital illustration and traditional ink drawings. The novella invites discussions of identity, bodies and the reasons we tell stories at all. It explores fairytale-like storytelling to create a uniquely eerie yet alluring atmosphere.
@catlord_rulez03 by Katerina Marsh
A short animation explores the world of a shut-in keyboard warrior of the late 1980’s. Through environmental storytelling and set dressing, Katerina Marsh illustrates the protagonist’s unhealthy, obsessive mindset leaking into, and ultimately consuming, his surroundings. The piece draws inspiration from a wide range of animated works. The protagonist’s design however is directly influenced by Katz, an antagonist from the cartoon Courage the Cowardly Dog. Katerina Marsh says, “This stylised, strange look I drew from his design helped me to achieve the uneasy, cartoonish tone. The piece was created entirely in the 3D software Blender.”
Estranged, by Alex Pham
Estranged is a 26-page zine about an ex-friendship, tackling themes of change, loneliness, and relationships. It follows an alphabetical structure with each letter corresponding to a memory, or thought, of Sun through the perspective of Star. Illustrations accompany each letter with a burst of colour. The zine is based on a half-decade friendship that drifted apart with a lulling end and the impact it left behind. Feelings and emotions are not always easy to put into words. It is written in the style of an alphabet to represent a relearning, like a child’s first step to reading.
He Ao Ngaro: A Lost World, by Bryn Davison
This exhibition follows the story of Pounamu Waewae, a notorious Māori pirate whose name became legend across the seas of Te Ao Pakiwaitara. Known for his carved greenstone foot and his bond with a powerful sea-dwelling manaia, Waewae fought back against colonial forces during the rise of the Southern Dominion. Through this collection of artefacts, taonga, and recovered relics, He Ao Ngaro invites you to explore the blurred line between history and myth. These fragments offer a glimpse into a world reshaped by resistance, guardianship, and rebellion. Each item speaks to Waewae’s legacy as both a protector and a pirate, a defender of the weak and disruptor of empires. Whether he was a hero, an outlaw, or something in between, the world he left behind endures, if only in fragments. His story, like so many others, survives in pieces, washed ashore from a forgotten age.
Clean Break, by Benjamin Pilbrow
Clean Break is a short first-person narrative game about objects, memory, and the quiet violence of letting go. Players explore a seemingly ordinary house, guided by a narrator urging you to “remove” anything that doesn’t belong-a fridge in the living room, a sink in the study-smash what feels wrong. Keep what feels right, if anything still does.
As players delve deeper, the line between house and mind begins to blur. What starts as a simple act of decluttering becomes something messier: a reckoning with grief, denial, anger, and acceptance. Break carefully. Not everything can be put back together.
Original music composed by Spirit Addis & Daniel Steedman. Everything else by Benjamin Pilbrow.
It’s Time To Go, by Sarah Mckerrow
A mixed-media 2D animation follows a conversation with “god” after death.
Based on “egg theory” by Andy Weir, Sarah McKerrow wanted to “focus on playing with materials, not used before to create a mixed-media, tactile animation. The text is taken from magazines and the god was drawn using a multicoloured pencil.”
McKerrow loves playing with humour and creating things that make people laugh. “Since this was a heavier topic, I think it’s not only more important but also funnier if I really play into the humor of this animation.”
Welcome To The Party; Disembodied Dances, by Lucy Woodall
A love letter to movement, memory, and music. Five personal anecdotes weave a fragmented memoir of growing confidence, deepening relationships, and an expanding sense of self. Welcome To The Party; Disembodied Dances is a zine that pulses with the rhythm of late-night venues, sticky floors, and things unsaid. Through poetic prose, the piece traces the physical and emotional evolution of dance as a form of expression, rebellion, and self-discovery. Each scene is rooted in place, Auckland, Wellington, mezzanines, alleyways, cinema aisles; where the body becomes both subject and storyteller. This is dancing as confession, dancing as confrontation, dancing as connection. Letting us say the things we can’t.
Coastal Postal, by HousCat Creative
A short, cozy adventure game where you take over your grandfather’s seaplane delivery service, flying mail and packages across the vibrant islands of The Archipelago. See an early development slice of the game, which is currently set for
release in March 2026!
Directed by Curtis Chapman and developed by a team of over 20 people, Coastal Postal is being built to reflect the production pipeline of an established game studio. With dedicated departments for Art, Audio, Narrative, Music, Programming, and Marketing, the team brings together a broad range of skills essential to delivering a project of this scope. When applying for jobs within the games industry, having a shipped game is an absolute necessity. Coastal Postal was designed to be just that: a collaborative experience that team members can proudly showcase in their portfolios as they take their first steps into the industry.
The Spirit of the Laughing Owl, by Clydille-Rave Abbott
In this whimsical 3D animated comedy, a young painter struggling with a creative block finds himself in an unlikely partnership with a mischievous Laughing Owl spirit. Desperate to be remembered and leave their mark, the spirit of the Laughing Owl sneaks into the painter’s studio one night, causing chaos by knocking over paints, rearranging canvases, and making playful messes. Frustrated by the Laughing Owl’s antics and the strange laughter heard at night, the painter’s imagination is reignited, and he realises that sometimes, inspiration comes in the most unexpected forms.
Watcher Alchemy: How to create a She-Moth and Full Moon tales, by Kate Nolan
Handmade visual narrative objects explore the world of spells, alchemy and full moon magic. Meet ‘The Watcher’, alchemized with the magickal instructions of a grimoire, and see a real full moon tale transformed into the story of a full moon apothecarist.
The MFA is a unique programme in Aotearoa New Zealand that invites students to master the art of visual storytelling. Designed similarly to a creative writing degree, the MFA caters to artists who seek to craft compelling narratives using various visual media. Students will collaborate with peers from Film, Theatre, Music, and Animation to create dynamic, cross-media projects.
Find out more about tertiary study options across Aotearoa New Zealand on our Design Schools page and for more information about the Visual Narrative Lab, the MFA program, and upcoming events, visit visualnarrativelab.nz
