Various Artists with Sofia & Maya

Dreaming From Afar is a new group exhibition showing at Gus Fisher which brings together the practices of Gian Manik, Brunelle Dias Primbs, and Tyrone Te Waa. The show circulates the complexities of history, and nostalgia through this painterly language that seeks to morph the physical with the imagined. 

Gian Manik is a Naarm-based painter, who produces mesmerising works that play with ​​various tropes preserved within the historical painting genres of still life, landscape, and portraiture. Within Dreaming From Afar Manik showcases a beautiful body of paintings that includes various methods of painterly application. Intimate and finely rendered works on oil on canvas, as well as these lively frescos that become one with the gallery space itself. 

The works themselves bring together Manik's fascination with historical painting, and old masters, alongside his research and exploration of orientalism and queer representation within art history. Pulling these themes together in space to produce works that grapple with the entrenched hetero and ethnocentric hierarchies of the western art cannon.

Maya caught up with Gian about the show and overall practice.

 Maya caught up with with curator and artist Millie Dunstall about Portal, showing at Artspace Aotearoa’s The Kit. Alongside Millie's interview Maya also spoke to two of the 17 artists showing work within Portal, Emma Stretch and kyung Baro.

Maya also had a kōrero with Fiona Connor about her current show at Coastal signs, Blanket Games. And alongside Fiona, Maya also spoke with Bailey Connolly about their artist collective Polyhymnia.

Whakarongo mai <3 xx

Portal is a new group exhibition showing at The Kit, which brings together 17 artists who have volunteered at Artspace Aotearoa over the past two years. The show circulates this idea of revisitation, with each artist returning to a past artwork and re-developing it within this space of collective renewal and shared experiences. Highlighting the circulate process of artists, how this act of revisiting, re-developing, and responding come together to produce this regenerative cycle of work. Each cycle gathering new experiences, and connections that fuel the next circulation of work to come.

Maya caught up with Curator of the show Millie Dunstall, who is also an participating artist within the exhibnition. She also caught up with two of the artists included within the show, Emma Stretch and Kyung Baro. 

Portal includes works by: Frankie Ayers, Kyung Baro, Stella Barry, Kerin Casey, Millie Dunstall, Sinag Fernadez, Inga Fillery, Neve Gresswell, Ziggy Humberstone, Zach muir, Paige Nebbeling, Emma Savage, Rebekah Sohn, Jude Stevens, Emma Stretch, Laura Watson, Ivy Weir.

After the undercurrents is a new exhibition bringing together the work of two senior painters, Australian artist Gordon Bennett and Tāmaki-based Emily Karaka, opening tonight at Artspace Aotearoa. 

Gordon Bennett was a Brisbane-based artist who is widely recognised as one of Australia’s most significant and critically engaged contemporary practitioners. His practice moved between these different phases – from often more abstract forms, to his conscious appropriation of Basquiat to create these cross-cultural dialogues, to the work made under the name of ‘John Citizen’ as a means to question identity and politics of categorisation in Australian art – seeking to map alternative histories and question the status quo through these various forms. 

His work has been paired with Tāmaki-based painter Emily Karaka whose practice draws on the personal and political through these diverse art making traditions, vibrant colours, and historical narratives that guide her. Grounded in the cultural and political landscape of Aotearoa, her work articulates emotional intensity and her unique perspective, speaking to her long-standing advocacy for kaitiakitanga and mana motuhake. 

In After the undercurrents, with both artists drawing on their respective narratives of place and indigenous worldviews, the pairing allows the viewer to contemplate Artspace Aotearoa’s annual question for 2026: ‘Which history?’

Sof had a kōrero with Kaitohu Director of Artspace Aotearoa, Ruth Buchanan, about the show and Gordon Bennett and Emily Karaka’s respective practices.