Various Artists with Sofia & Maya

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.

Maya speaks to Te Whanganui-a-Tara based artist and curator Jamie R H about her show I Runga O Ngā Puke (travels over feeling) currently on at Window Gallery. 

And Sof catches up with AD Schierning about Bill Hammond: Serenading Imagined Worlds currently on at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery. 

Whakarongo mai <3

Ruby Wilkinson is an emerging artist whose paintings explore aspects of the environment, specifically those close to her and her memories. Leaning into her surroundings as well as her painterly intuition to produce these beautiful works that dance with bold swooping gestures, and vibrant earthy colours that sing out to those saturated within nature.  

Her work Parade is currently showing as part of A Moment to Hold at The Arts House Trust at Pah Homestead. An exhibition bringing together seven female artists engaged in painting and drawing, featuring works by brunelle diaz, Hannah Ireland, Christina Pataialii, Johanna Pegler, Kate Small, Barbara Tuck, and Ruby Wilkinson. 

Wilkinson's work Parade showcases a stunning large scale sculptural curtain, made up of 8 calico panels that have each been treated as a painting in itself. Coming together to form a breathtaking display of movement and colour, that pulls viewers into its world of warm sun sets and memories—allowing a moment of hold within the fleeting memories of time.

Elise McDermott is a Tāmaki-based artist, whose sculptural and installation practice explores everyday encounters with nostalgia, memory, and cultures of consumerism and production through found objects and materials. 

In her current exhibition at RM Gallery, Pop Sediment, McDermott has reconstructed and recontextualised these objects’ forms, letting familiar references and playful aesthetics of pop culture and our domestic worlds enter the gallery and public space. In giving them these altered identities, the work serves as an opportunity to reconsider their value, challenging our preexisting conceptions of these objects’ worth through this material language. 

Sof had a kōrero with Elise about the show and her overall practice.