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Rationalist House
64 Symonds Street
Tāmaki Makaurau
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Friday 11 - 4
Saturday 11 - 4
& by appointment

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Meet the Artist: Java Bentley

Saturday, 17 October
1:00 – 2:00

Join us in the gallery for a relaxed afternoon tea and kōrero with Java Bentley and curator Felixe Laing. Cubeside Annex marks an important point in Java’s practice, with the work developing through her Masters research and ongoing questions around sustainability and whakapapa.

Come along to meet Java, hear more about the work’s development, and spend time with the artist as we explore what it means to bring Cubeside Annex back to Tāmaki Makaurau.

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Oneiwa & Onewaru‍ ‍
475 x 1000 & 1819 x 1730

as part of Cubside Annex, 2023 - 2026
Umbrellas gifted by Karangawai Marsh, repurposed materials

@javabentley by @grace_aotearoa

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4 days ago

Now on show at Grace, Rationalist House.

Java Bentley
Cubside Annex, 2023 - 2026
Umbrellas gifted by Karangawai Marsh, repurposed materials

@javabentley by @grace_aotearoa

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9 days ago

Cubeside Annex
Java Bentley
01 October - 24 October

Full documentation is now online at graceaotearoa.net

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Cubeside Annex, 2023 - 2026
Umbrellas gifted by Karangawai Marsh, repurposed materials
Java

📷 @samuel_hartnett by @grace_aotearoa

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12 days ago

Now on view at Grace Aotearoa, Java Bentley’s Cubeside Annex curated by Felixe Laing.

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Onetahi
1840 x 1710

Cubeside Annex, 2023 - 2026
Umbrellas gifted by Karangawai Marsh, repurposed materials

📷 @samuel_hartnett by @grace_aotearoa

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17 days ago

Java Bentley b.1994 (Ngāti Kahu, Ngāpuhi, Faatoia Samoa) is a sculptural installation artist and curator based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her recent research into making has enabled concepts of new mauri, memory and belonging to be traced through both writing and material practice.

She is currently Curator and Exhibitions Manager at Homestead Galleries, Corban Estate Arts Centre (2026). In 2025, she was an Emerging Curator with Mataaho Collective at Tate Modern, London, and in 2024, an Intern Curator with Heerz Tooya in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. She was also a funded Emerging Artist at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Bentley holds a Master of Māori Visual Arts from Toioho ki Āpiti (2024), and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) with a conjoint in Art History from Elam School of Fine Arts, Waimata Taumata Rau (2018).

@javabentley by @grace_aotearoa

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24 days ago

Grace presents Cubeside Annex, an exhibition by Java Bentley curated by Felixe Laing.

01 October - 24 October

Preview: Thursday 01 October, 6:00 - 8:00

Nau mai, haere mai!

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𝘏𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘶𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦, 𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘰𝘩𝘪𝘢 𝘢𝘯𝘢, 𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘢 𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘢, 𝘦 𝘬𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘰𝘩𝘪𝘢.

𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘢 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯.

Originally assembled as a whare, Cubeside Annex was first created as a replica of the studio space where Java Bentley was working in Te Papaioea Palmerston North. For its presentation at Grace Aotearoa, the work has been reconfigured within the Rationalist House in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.

Working with gifted umbrellas and repurposed materials, Bentley traces questions of whakapapa, provenance, memory and, mauri through the changing life of a house. In this reconfiguration she considers what happens when a whole is separated into its parts, and what remains connected through whenua, belonging and exchange.

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Grace and the artist would like to acknowledge Karangawai Marsh, Felixe Laing, Robyn Walton, Scott Facer, and the artist’s family.

@javabentley
@felixelaing by @grace_aotearoa

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24 days ago

Cubeside Annex
Java Bentley
01 October - 24 October

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Preview: Thursday 01 October, 6:00 - 8:00

Nau mai, haere mai!

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The preview of Cubeside Annex is sponsored by Matter of Time.

@matteroftimewines by @grace_aotearoa

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24 days ago

Meet the Artists, Te Ata Pō

Saturday, 26 September
10am–12pm
Rationalist House

To mark the closing of Te Ata Pō, Te Marunui Hotene and Thom Hinton will share personal insights and kōrero about the exhibition and their practices in the gallery.

A beautiful print edition of Ruth Minh Ha’s essay ‘On the margins of language’ will also be available. Courtesy of @highlowstudio.mark

Supported by Beabea’s Bakery — join us for a coffee and pastry!

@beabeas.bakery by @grace_aotearoa

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a month ago

Essay: On the margins of language
Ruth Minh Ha

Grace presents a commissioned essay by Ruth Minh Ha on the occasion of 'Te Ata Pō' by Te Marunui Hotene and Thom Hinton:

“Another cosmological diagram that Hinton looks to is 'Saltair na Rann', which lends titles to two works in the show: the 'Smiling Purple' painting from earlier in the text, and 'Babbling Dun', a delicate pink landscape rendered on a half-plaster, half-canvas support. 'Saltair na Rann' is a tenth-century classic of Middle Irish poetry, and includes a chromatic map of the cosmos:

From the East, the smiling purple,
from the South, the pure white, wondrous,
from the North, the black blustering moaning wind,
from the West, the babbling dun breeze."

Read the full text online via the link in the bio.

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Ruth Minh Ha is a writer and curator based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Of Russian and Vietnamese heritage, she was born in Moscow and relocated to Aotearoa in 2015. She studied Art History and Computer Science at the University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau and in 2023 was the recipient of the Michèle Whitecliffe Art Writing Prize. She is currently an assistant curator at Gus Fisher Gallery, and has previously worked as a curatorial assistant at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

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Pictured:

Thom Hinton
'Babbling Dun', 2026
Oil, charcoal, graphite, plaster, linen
250 × 300

Portrait of Ruth Minh Ha
📷 Liam Philp

@thom.hinton
@ruthminhha by @grace_aotearoa

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a month ago

Essay: On the margins of language
Ruth Minh Ha

Grace presents a commissioned essay by Ruth Minh Ha on the occasion of 'Te Ata Pō' by Te Marunui Hotene and Thom Hinton:

“…the waharoa form in 'Taku whare kōrero’, make me ask Hotene if he has ever thought about carving. He laughs; apparently, his dad – a carver – has been pestering him about the same thing, urging him to materialise the designs in three dimensions. I feel a little bashful about my question, misguided by the lingering connotation of drawings as provisional. Perhaps it’s the medium’s accessibility that makes for a fertile testing ground, stringing along an implication of something more permanent to come. For Hotene, the drawings are permanent enough.”

Read the full text online via the link in the bio.

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Ruth Minh Ha is a writer and curator based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Of Russian and Vietnamese heritage, she was born in Moscow and relocated to Aotearoa in 2015. She studied Art History and Computer Science at the University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau and in 2023 was the recipient of the Michèle Whitecliffe Art Writing Prize. She is currently an assistant curator at Gus Fisher Gallery, and has previously worked as a curatorial assistant at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

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Pictured:

Te Marunui Hotene
'Taku where kōrero', 2026
Pencil and ink on paper, burnt Mānuka frame
480 × 570

Portrait of Ruth Minh Ha
📷 Liam Philp

@temarunuihotene
@ruthminhha by @grace_aotearoa

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a month ago

𝓣𝓮 𝓐𝓽𝓪 𝓟ō is an exhibition by 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝗺 𝗛𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗻 and 𝗧𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝘂𝗻𝘂𝗶 𝗛𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗲 currently on at @grace_aotearoa. Placing their practices in conversation with one another, a rich dialogue is created within the space surrounding expression and form, distinct cultural histories and relationships to place, as concepts and aesthetic languages that thread their practices together.

𝗧𝗵𝗼𝗺 𝗛𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗻 (@thom.hinton) is a Tāmaki-based artist and tattooist whose painting and drawing practice brings in these earthly materials – charcoal, oxide, clay, plaster – in an exploration of archetypal symbols in European cosmology. Drawing on ancient histories of mark making and their impact on contemporary structures, Hinton examines these early medieval artistic practices, or insular art, in relation to our understanding of beauty and reverence today. What comes out of these curiosities is this rhythmic mark making – a beautiful contrast between abstract and symbolic sensibilities and material languages.

𝗧𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝘂𝗻𝘂𝗶 𝗛𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗲 (@temarunuihotene) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Taneatua, whose practice draws on his cultural identity and whakapapa, using his art as a platform for reflection and processing experience. Within 𝒯𝑒 𝒜𝓉𝒶 𝒫ō, Hotene presents a beautiful series of new works, as well as some older pieces from his earlier practice – creating this beautiful conversation around the self, past and present. His recent pencil drawings draw on his mau rākau practice, utilising realism to document scenes from recent wananga held in Tūhoe. From this exploration, Hotene has brought in mānuka as a material, subject, and framing device – materially expanding his artistic practice through its burning and tikanga.

Listen back to Sof’s kōrero with each artist about the exhibition and their respective practices at the link in bio ♥️ by @grace_aotearoa

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a month ago

Introducing: Associate Director, Felixe Laing

Grace is delighted to announce that Felixe Laing has joined the gallery as an Associate Director.

Since joining Grace at the beginning of the year, Felixe has worked closely with Emil Scheffmann to shape the gallery’s exhibition programme, while contributing to the gallery’s future development through her expertise in communications and strategy. Over the next year, Felixe will work towards exhibitions with Java Bentley, Eleanor Cooper, Madison Kelly, Cindy Huang, and Liam Jacobson.

Her curatorial practice is shaped by the values and practices of hospitality, with a sustained interest in creating conditions for artists to develop ambitious work. She is particularly interested in supporting practices that emerge from and grapple with compelling questions about contemporary life in Aotearoa.

Recent projects include the Whakamanu Exchange Residency, 'cab–sous vide' by Abigail Aroha Jensen at The Dowse Art Museum, and leading Chez Derriere at Te Tuhi’s Parnell Project Space. She is also Co-Chair of Samoa House Library and works across communications and audience development at Artspace Aotearoa.

@felixelaing

Portrait by Samuel Hartnett by @grace_aotearoa

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a month ago