Ruby Wilkinson, Belle Plaine, Aotearoa Art Fair 2026

At Aotearoa Art Fair 2026, Jhana Millers Gallery will present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Ruby Wilkinson. For the Fair, she has developed Belle Plaine, a body of work made following her recent return to Tāmaki Makaurau.

Wilkinson’s paintings move between abstraction and figuration, building compositions where landscape, atmosphere, and bodily presence intersect.

Working from her studio in Onehunga, the paintings draw on fragments of daily experience — shifting evening light, views toward the ranges out west, and encounters with animals in the landscape. These observations are translated through colour and gesture, where forms appear and dissolve across the surface of the canvas.

Throughout the exhibition, and across her wider practice, the boundary between abstraction and figuration remains porous. A recurring motif in this new series is the native moth, drawn from time living and working in the Waitākere ranges. In many traditions moths are understood as visitors or messengers, carrying associations with memory, spirit, and ancestral presence.

The exhibition takes its title from a cargo ship the artist encountered while fishing in the South Pacific — a vessel she later found herself tracking as it moved across the world’s oceans. Like the ship, the paintings carry fragments of experience: memory, observation, and the shifting sensations of place gathered and transformed through paint.