This exhibition brings together the practices of two senior Indigenous painters from Aotearoa and Australia. Gordon Bennett and Emily Karaka’s paintings draw on narratives of place, colonialism, popular culture, and Indigenous cosmologies to explore ideas of struggle and belonging. After the undercurrents enables audiences to time travel as the artists conjure the deep time of the autua (gods), the recent attacks on Indigenous sovereignty, and heroes from contemporary art history. Through painting the artists question our histories and invite audiences to imagine our futures.
This exhibition contains one video work with strong language located in a discreet section of the gallery.
Image Credit: Gordon Bennett, Notes to Basquiat_ Volcano II (2001). Courtesy of the Estate of Gordon Bennett
Emily Karaka (NZ) of Ngāpuhi (Ngāti Hine and Ngāti Kahu o Torongare) and Waikato-Tainui (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki; Te Kawerau ā Maki; Ngāti Tamaoho; Te Ākitai Waiohua; Ngāti Rori-Te Ahiwaru; Ngāti Mahuta and Ngāti Tahinga)
