His painting seeks to embody a new paradigmatic experience of the world that shifts seamlessly between material and dematerialized form. The result is a sensuous representation of contemporary experience, which, like all art, speaks to its moment of making, reflecting our contemporary viewing and experience of the world via online platforms. Ironically also, these complex, deeply-layered, luscious works seductively call to be experienced directly and viscerally, and in that experience show up the absence of the sensory and the second-handedness of much of the online experience.

While early works focused on translating computer-generated imagery to hand-made painting, more recent work is about blurring the boundaries, and creating a new kind of representation.

His work is in the collections of Taiwan Museum of Art; Te Manawa Museum (NZ); Christchurch Art Gallery (NZ); and University of Canterbury (NZ), amongst others. In 2016 Hemer was awarded the prestigious New Paramount Award from the Wallace Arts Trust and the New Zealand Arts Foundation New Generation Award. Artist residencies include: The Studios at MASS MoCA, Massachusetts, USA (2020); International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, USA (2017), Cité International des Arts, Paris, France (2015); Arts Tasmania, Hobart, Australia (2015); amongst others.