Butchers — Benjamin Nicol & Emily Mahoney
Butchers - Benjamin Nicol & Emily Mahoney
22/10/26 - 14/11/26
Opening 5:30pm on Wednesday 21st of October
Who gets to be a body, and who gets treated as meat? Butchers examines the machinery of exploitation, confronting the systems that turn living beings into commodities and make violence feel ordinary.
Bringing together Benjamin Nicol’s moving sculptures and Emily Mahoney’s uncanny latex forms, Butchers is a collaborative installation where the abattoir meets the gallery. A system of cables, pulleys and gears spans the gallery walls, evoking the relentless efficiency of a poultry processing line. Within this mechanical environment, Mahoney’s forms occupy an uneasy space between the recognisable and the alien, the body and the product.
Bodies are processed, sorted and transformed into commodities, while the machinery of production renders violence routine. Through their respective practices, Nicol and Mahoney examine how systems of power determine which bodies are valued, how they are treated, and what happens when living beings are reduced to their productive or commercial worth.
Inviting viewers to encounter the work as active participants, Butchers asks us to consider our own place within these systems. What forms of violence are concealed by the everyday circulation of commodities, and how complicit are we in the structures that sustain them?
Emily Mahoney is a sculpture-based artist from Te Whanganui-a-Tara whose work investigates the limits of the human and non-human body. Her practice explores empathy and rejection, drawing on lived experiences. Working with materials including bone, hair and latex, Mahoney produces offspring that are soft, painful and humorous. Her installations invite audiences to interact, care, play and observe.
She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours (First Class) from Toi Rauwhārangi Massey College of Creative Arts. Recent exhibitions include Nesting (Hunters And Collectors, 2026) and Inflorescence (Thistle Hall, 2025).
Benjamin Nicol is a Māori (Ngāti Pāhauwera, Ngāpuhi) and Pākehā sculptor and video artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. His practice explores class culture and capitalist structures of being through moving sculptures made from industrial and construction materials. Working predominantly with steel, timber and pulleys, Nicol examines the effects of capitalism under colonialism on the working class.
He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours (First Class) from Toi Rauwhārangi Massey College of Creative Arts. Recent exhibitions include Making Do (Twentysix, 2026) and Teeth and Nails (off-site, 2025).
Poster design by Harris Wilson
Sponsored by Parrotdog beer & Puffin wine
With support from Creative New Zealand