A thoughtful encounter with Mark Adams’s 2025 survey at Auckland Art Gallery. A reflection on what I almost missed, and how small choices like a bench, a title or a frame can quietly shift how we see.

Frances Hodgkins is a major figure in New Zealand art history, but what if the work just doesn’t resonate? This piece explores why Hodgkins’ paintings feel unresolved to me, what that says about taste and canon, and offers other artists whose work lands with more clarity, colour, and conviction.

There are no neutral spaces. If you’re looking for something clean, measured, and polite, turn back now. No Neutral Spaces wasn’t made to sit on the fence. It was made to name the thing — loud and clear, with teeth. Neutrality isn’t truth or maturity; it’s a tactic that hides the politics already running the show.

This blog is about refusing to flatten difficult stories for comfort or reach. It’s about art and ideas that carry real stakes, that are unapologetically rooted in identity, history, and power.

If you want to engage honestly and critically with the frameworks shaping what we see and say, you’re in the right place. Because neutrality is a myth — and real change starts when we stop pretending otherwise.