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.