PLATFORM 26 – making matters
Artwork: Indicative works in progress, clockwise from top left- Susannah Bridges, Rebecca Asquith, Kennedy Brown & Leon Kipa
10 October – 21 November 2026
DEPOT Artspace
28 Clarence Street, Devonport
Exhibition Opening:
Saturday 10th October, 2 – 4pm
making matters brings together 7 skilled New Zealand makers who share common values and an aptitude for hands-on making. By employing their individual practical and aesthetic sensibilities, new 3-dimensional works have been created to reflect each makers practice and perspective.
Via explorations of material manipulation, sustainability, light, sound and play, the collection of works tell stories of space, temptation, the unknown, fragility, curiosity and whakapapa.
Platform 26 presents viewers with agency to interpret each work in relation to their own experiences and stories, so maker and viewer are connected in a dialogue that explores resonance and identity…
Platform 26 makers are grounded in a belief that maintaining connection with a like-minded group, as well as an extended creative community, is central to their practice. As the groups post inaugural exhibition, this “platform” offers an opportunity to share insight into the concepts and process behind each makers work. Platform 26 aims to deliver exciting new objects that ask the audience to consider “how” and “why” we make things, and thus to pose further contemplation on why Making Matters.
Rebecca Asquith
Susannah Bridges
Kennedy Brown
Edward Fuller
Rupert Herring
Roger Kelly
Leon Kipa
Artworks for PLATFORM 26 – making matters will be added to this event soon.
Rebecca Asquith
Rebecca Asquith is a contemporary craft artist from New Zealand whose practice explores
environmental themes through sculpture, model-making and assemblage.
Her work centres on the creation of miniature environments and sculptural pieces that question human behaviour, examining the fragile tension between human activity and the natural world. Using discarded materials and carefully crafted scenes, she tells stories about consumption, waste and what is often left unseen.
She uses well-known phrases as titles which act as entry points, guiding interpretation while
adding a layer of irony. These expressions, widely understood and often taken for granted,
mirror the way we engage with consumption itself: habitual, unexamined and embedded in
culture.
By compressing these ideas into contained, fragile environments, she aims to create a moment of pause and reflection. Inviting viewers to look closer, reconsider what lies beneath the surface, and reflect on their own relationship with the systems and materials that shape everyday life.
Her background spans 27 years’ experience in the film industry as a Model Maker, Set Designer and Assistant Art Director. As well as 15 years designing and making furniture and lighting products.
She has participated in 1-3 weeklong art collaborations in New Zealand, Canada, Cambodia and Japan. As well as having exhibited internationally both her furniture, lighting and artwork, her work is also held in private collections.
www.rebeccaasquith.com
www.instagram.com/rebeccaasquith
Susannah Bridges
Susannah Bridges is an Auckland based artist/designer who spent several of her younger years growing up in Devonport. She is well known for her work with ceramics, especially with porcelain and light. Her work has been acquired by the Auckland Museum, The Dowse Art Museum and MTG Hawkes Bay. Susannah’s work is widely recognized within New Zealand and has also been exhibited offshore. She has received both national and international awards.
Her current practice centres primarily on functional works – vessel forms, porcelain lighting and tableware. As well as producing ceramics and lighting for the home, Susannah has also designed and made furniture. As a finalist many times in The Portage Ceramic Awards, she has occasionally created sculptural and installation works for exhibition, receiving a merit award for her work “Stick To The Knitting” in 2016.
Alongside her work as a designer/maker, Susannah has held many interesting roles. She has taught at tertiary level, written editorial copy for magazine publication, managed arts projects, and made props for film industry. She is a total lover of music and earlier in her career she worked in the music industry, including a stint at seminal NZ label Flying Nun Records.
susannahbridges.co.nz
susannahbridgesdesign
Kennedy Brown
Kennedy Brown began designing and making furniture in the late 1990s. Inspired by growing up in the cultural melting pot that is Aotearoa, New Zealand, Kennedy’s creations display elements of art, design and craft — as well as free-thinking and experimentation.
Born into a large and creative family on Auckland’s North Shore, Kennedy completed a Bachelor of Design at Auckland’s Unitec in 2001. He then developed his craft at the furniture design and business incubator Cicada Studios in Hawke’s Bay before returning to Auckland where he continues to live and work. Kennedy has exhibited his creations across the motu and abroad, including a commission for the Venice Biennale.
Brown has a passion for sustainability and is involved with organisations focused on the reuse and recovery of resources. Intuitively, these influences often underpin his creative process.
https://kennedybrown.co.nz/
https://www.instagram.com/kennedybrown_designartcraft/
Edward Fuller
Edward Fuller is a multi-disciplinary designer living on Auckland’s North Shore.
He concentrates on the design and production of objects and furniture which primarily explore the manipulation of flat surfaces and repetition of geometric shapes.
By allowing his design process to work largely within the laws of geometry, he has created a unique and original language of form and function which he uses as the core foundation for his design direction.
Edward has works in private, as well as public collections, and has regularly produced one-off and short batch pieces since the late nineties. https://www.edwardfuller.co.nz/
https://www.instagram.com/edwardfuller.designnz/
Rupert Herring
Rupert Herring is an artist and designer based in Mangawhai. He combines his skills as a cabinet maker and knowledge of materials to create work which projects ideas of transformation and potential within
the realm of used objects/ and or material. Making something new from something old.
A lot of his works are nostalgic visions in a world of throw away excess and economic efficiency gone awry. The intention is that these works will breathe through time rather than
get suffocated by it.
https://www.instagram.com/hollidayherring/
Roger Kelly
Roger Kelly is based in Hawkes Bay and has a 30-year history designing, making and exhibiting furniture and objects and 20 years lecturing in 3D design and design thinking practice.
Current research and practice focuses on making objects that enhances people’s wellbeing by supporting our connections to place, to nature, ourselves and each other through deep materialism. Roger’s work
contributes to the ongoing conversation about the value of our things and the value of craft, more specifically focusing on the belief that a specific object are signifiers and reminders of ourselves, as such object making as a form of identity creation.
Within Rogers design education role, his philosophy centres around helping creators to think differently, to utilise a design thinking mindset and develop craft skills. This work has been furthered after gaining a master’s
in creative enterprise and innovation in 2025.
On a personal level Roger seeks to explore the inherent value within objects that have the potential to fulfil peoples spiritual, physical and psychological needs, to explore deep materialism – a spiritual connection to our material world and the changing relationship with objects and their making.
The work within Platform 26 explores identity, community and connection. In this current zeitgeist our attention is often drawn to the very systems that hold society together, my concern is in the power of voice, media and spin doctors who create
echo chambers as tools used to amplify and reinforce confirmation bias. It feels important at
this time to question our lot, our shared values with those that are elected to maintain us
within these wicked systems. Echo chambers are represented by acoustic voxels, in this case
primitive forms used to manipulate and interconnect voice and noise.
https://www.instagram.com/craftpeople_nz/
Leon Kipa
Leon Kipa. Nō Waikato, rātou ko Te Arawa, ko Ngā Puhi ko Ngāti Kahu. Based in Panmure Auckland Leon operates from his workshop and studio dedicated to his creative endeavours.
With a background in industrial design and a commitment to customary knowledge, his practice moves between traditional whakairo and contemporary object making, always grounded in connection.
Positive connection is paramount to his life, family, iwi, his creative communities and beyond. Indigenous values have inspired an introspective journey and his history tells of long lasting Iwi relationships of trade in resources and expertise. These examples sustained longevity and prosperity for his people and environment throughout many generations. He strives to restore those values in his lifestyle and creative practice.
https://www.instagram.com/toikipa/
Artists involved in PLATFORM 26 – making matters include:
Kennedy Brown
Edward Fuller
Leon Kipa
Rebecca Asquith
Roger Kelly
Rupert Herring
Susannah Bridges
Catalogue to be added soon.
October 10 @ 10:00 am – November 21 @ 4:00 pm
