Must-see galleries for the summer

LEE MINGWEI AND HIS RELATIONS: THE ART OF PARTICIPATION, Auckland Art ­Gallery (until March 19)

Accept a song, write a letter, sleep over. Active interactions in the gallery space may have lost their shock effect, but Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei’s participatory or relational art remains a flag-bearer for social engagement in public spaces.

ANN SHELTON: DARK MATTER, Auckland Art Gallery (until April 17)

Two decades of masterful work, ­including unseen photographs from the 1990s, reveal the artist’s forensic approach to our social, historical and environmental backstories.

ENERGIES: HAINES AND HINTERDING, Christchurch Art Gallery (until March 5)

Australian artists David Haines and Joyce Hinterding draw on science, philosophy and the occult in their big, immersive, cross-media interactions with all things energy: radio waves, TV signals, satellite transmissions and motion-detection systems.

UNDREAMED OF … 50 YEARS OF THE FRANCES HODGKINS FELLOWSHIP, Dunedin Art Gallery (until February 26)

A must-see. More than 90 works ­created over half a century show the huge ­contribution of the fellowship to this country’s art and an eclectic mix of work by some of our leading artists.

PLAY DEAD: REAL TIME, Douglas Gordon, Dunedin Art Gallery (until February 19)

While in Dunedin, see this three-channel video work by Turner Prize-winning ­Scottish artist Douglas Gordon that tracks the antics of a four-year-old circus elephant performing tricks on a gallery floor – sweet, challenging, confrontational.

CINDY SHERMAN, City Gallery Wellington (until March 19)

Masked, exposed, polished, frail. The almost-complete personas of US artist Cindy Sherman are a funny, sad, ­mysterious study of celebrity, narcissism and self-invention.