Women, Memory And Tech Explored In Two Stunning Solo Shows

Muse Gallery welcomes the spring season with two established artists and two very different interpretations of what it is to be female.

While both Emma Hercus and Kate MacKenzie’s work examines womanhood, one draws on vivid childhood memories and the other probes the future and the impacts of technology.

Together, says Muse founder and director Kaye McGarva, they open a conversation about the feminine experience and womanly intuition. "It’s wonderful to showcase two artists who bring such different perspectives to questions that affect us all,” says Kaye. “Emma's work is luminous and full of love while Kate's is deliberate and provocative. They complement each other beautifully."

Painter Emma Hercus opened She Is Apples on 10 October, then Kate MacKenzie’s show MI > AI follows later in the month at the Havelock North gallery.

Emma Hercus: She Is Apples

Until October 29, 2025

Plimmerton-based Emma Hercus’s She Is Apples is a love letter to her early years holidaying in Hawke’s Bay – the region in which she was born. Her paintings recall a golden childhood of sun-drenched afternoons, hills baked brown, endless rows of apple trees, and the sustaining force of women.

Her ties to the region are strong – although her parents moved Emma and her siblings to Taumarunui, Emma’s great-grandfather George Ebbett was once the mayor of Hastings. Emma herself loved Hawke’s Bay’s long hot summers and now brings her own three children to visit as often as she can. “I’m so inspired by rural landscapes – it’s what I knew best when growing up,” she says. “Even though my very early memories are blurred, I can recall building huts and playing in the garden, and being around my mother, aunties and grandmother – all very creative women in their own right.”

Emma’s vibrant yet tender canvases celebrate the intensity of female connection and the bonds that hold women together. The title She Is Apples speaks, again, to her rural background. “It’s very Kiwi – it’s like saying ‘She’ll be right’ and a phrase I remember hearing growing up.

"This exhibition goes out to all the incredible, strong, kind and resilient women of Aotearoa," concludes Emma, "and to the wonderful family, friends, artists and art lovers who have supported me in my work. She Is Apples is me sharing some sunshine with you all."

Kate MacKenzie: MI > AI

Opens October 31, 2025

Kate MacKenzie's upcoming exhibition, MI > AI treads a different path. It considers whether our deepening reliance on artificial intelligence might be quietly undermining something more primal: maternal instinct, or as she’s coined it, MI.

In this new series, multiple award-winning artist Kate explores how leaning on external forces when seeking answers to everyday questions might make us doubt our own abilities. Her work shows women entangled in technology in ways that are deliberately ambiguous.

“When choosing a theme, I always gravitate towards things that concern me about the world,” says Kate. Although she maintains that she feels “positive” about the role of tech in our collective future, she’s also aware that for mothers, a deeper understanding of the change is necessary “to protect critical thinking and pass that skill on to our own children”.

That’s why her work contrasts ideas about exponential growth and information overload with images that are comfortable and familiar. There’s a sense of hope in the paintings too. “The impact of AI is a conversation we all need to have, without being too cynical about what lies ahead,” says Kate. “I'd like to think our MI – our mother's intuition or maternal instinct – is strong enough to never be harmed and that we can actively tune into its power.

"But I'm also asking whether the rise of AI erodes our confidence in that instinct."

About the artists

Emma Hercus was the Supreme Winner at the NZ National Contemporary Art Award 2022 and has twice been a finalist in the Craig’s Aspiring Art Prize.

Kate MacKenzie is an Adam Portraiture award and Parkin Drawing Prize finalist and was twice a Supreme winner at the World Of Wearable Art.

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