This exhibition brings together the artwork of Emily Karaka and Gordon Bennett, two senior painters from Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. Their artworks draw on narratives of place, colonisation, popular culture, and Indigenous world views to explore ideas of struggle and belonging. Both painters express the important role artists play in society by helping audiences see complex issues and encourage change. Through their unique painting styles these artists question our histories and invite us to imagine our futures.

Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland is located within a significant volcanic field, encouraging inhabitants and visitors alike to stay attuned to a sense of deep time. Made up of around 50 volcanoes, the field enables a connection that extends all the way to Mataaho, kaitiaki of the Earth’s secrets; to te iwi Māori who have lived and continue to live here; to the complexity of urbanisation, with many of these sacred sites having been mined for the city’s infrastructure. Deep below this isthmus is an undercurrent that every once in a while bursts through the mantle, ensuring we remember that indeed, the Earth is alive. As a site full of intensity, Tāmaki Makaurau provides an effective lens to consider history as an essential framework for reckoning with the here and now, prompting the questions: which parts of society gather pressure when issues are not tended to? What necessary conversations burst through, fundamentally changing how we live and relate to each other?

As potent voices of their generation, Emily Karaka’s and Gordon Bennett’s work bursts through the status quo. Both artists address the impacts of colonisation on themselves as individuals and the communities they belong to. Their visually divergent but equally propulsive practices can be characterised as history painting inviting new readings of contemporary society by opening up the nexus of politics, visual culture, and the deeply personal. The divergence in their practices creates a powerful friction in the exhibition, amplifying the implications of a fulsome scrutinisation of history. Friction is also evident in their shared approach to working in a highly embodied way by employing scale, dynamic surfaces, and even the inclusion of their whakapapa or themselves. By leaning into friction these artists shatter narrowing expectations of how a contemporary artist who is Indigenous should work and contribute whether in Aotearoa, Australia or beyond.