Ruby Wilkinson, Birding: Opening 5pm, Thursday 4 September

Gestural and emotive, Wilkinson’s paintings carry an irrepressible spontaneity, their surfaces alive with movement and atmosphere. In Birding, she turns her attention skyward, tracing the elusive forms of birds in flight. Flickers of muted pink, burnt orange, and storm-grey dissolve into layered skies, where figures hover on the cusp of legibility before dissolving again into colour. Wilkinson’s brushwork—scrubbed, feathered, and looped—echoes the arcs of flight, capturing the tension between presence and disappearance. Her canvases hold moments of suspension, where beginnings and endings blur, where something fleeting is briefly held.

Rather than fixed depictions, these works evoke the sensation of seeing and feeling at once—the glimmer of connection before it slips from view. Birds, with their transitory and borderless movement, become emblems of liberation, resistance, and unknowability. In Wilkinson’s hands, they remain sovereign: fluid forms that invite our attention yet resist possession.

Rooted in intuitive process and material experimentation, Wilkinson’s practice is shaped by the landscapes of Te Whanganui-a-Tara where she lives and Titirangi where she grew up. Through her paintings, she offers spaces for intimacy, reflection, and slow looking—painting as a way of sensing.

An essay by Kirsty Baker accompanies the show.

View the preview catalogue here.