Writing
Writing
Living Things
16.03.2024
In this short piece, originally put together as a HUMcard mailout for Contemporary HUM's Publishers Circle, Aotearoa-based artist Yukari Kaihori reflects on her two-week residency at Ma Umi Residencies on Ishigaki Island, Japan. The impacts of climate change and marine debris on the subtropical island offer the context for a meditation on the ecological entanglements between objects, animals, and places.
We Work Well Together
By Julia Craig
11.02.2024
Presented at Phillida Reid, Claudia Kogachi’s Labour of Love and Nova Paul’s Hawaiki offer frames through which to view the role of collaborative practice in building worlds of love, care, and self-determination.
“To see us on our best day.”
By Dávvet Bruun-Solbaak
15.12.2023
Offering a glimpse at the wide range of emotions and encounters that Aotearoa-based artist Maungarongo Te Kawa and Northern Sámi activist Dávvet Bruun-Solbaak share in their multifaceted experiences at different edges of the globe, this conversation takes Te Kawa’s recent residency and touring exhibition in Norway and Sámi territories as a departure point.
A Film Glossary
By José B. Segebre
29.11.2023
After a conversation with Frankfurt-based, Waipukurau-born artist Juliet Carpenter, José B. Segebre shaped the ideas discussed into this experimental glossary. The entries highlight the ways in which Carpenter’s practice is informed by film and theatre history, and is deeply engaged in the friction of contemporary politics and technologies.
Collective
By Emily Jan
20.11.2023
Upon visiting Treaty 8 territory for the exhibition Collective, by collaborative duo Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux, Alberta, Canada-based artist and writer Emily Jan considers how these photographic works function as a body which, like the trees they depict, carries stories; of human desires, needs, and actions of destruction or care.
What is held between bodies
By Clémentine Dubost
31.10.2023
After two years of development with his immediate family and numerous international residencies, Amit Noy premiered A Big Big Room Full of Everybody’s Hope in Paris this September, onstage alongside his mother, father, sister and grandmother. Clémentine Dubost spoke with Noy to explore the complexities of this work and his wider practice.
The Polyphonic Sea
By Emma O'Neill
10.10.2023
Presented at Bundanon Art Museum, deep in the territory of the Dharawal and Dhurga language groups, The Polyphonic Sea features new commissions and recontextualised work by Antonia Barnett McIntosh, Andrew Beck, Ruth Buchanan, The Estate of L. Budd, Sione Faletau, Samuel Holloway and et al., Sarah Hudson, Sonya Lacey, Nova Paul, Sriwhana Spong and Shannon Te Ao.
A River Runs Through It: Creative Currents Through Aotearoa and Japan with Grace Mirams
By Jennifer Pastore
22.09.2023
This summer Grace Mirams spent six weeks visiting studios and sharing her exhibition I’m at the river, I’ll meet you by the sea at Gallery Crossing in Minokamo, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. After speaking with Mirams in Tokyo and visiting the exhibition, writer Jennifer Pastore considers how Mirams’ practice and interests resonate with a region of Japan steeped in craft and exchange.
Dear Ella
By daniel ward
05.09.2023
In a letter to Aotearoa New Zealand artist Ella Sutherland, Berlin-based poet daniel ward reflects on the sensual role of printing technologies and the passage of queer narratives in Sutherland’s practice during her twelve-month residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin.
Feeling, pressed
By Ash Kilmartin
18.08.2023
Zooming-in to personal memory and bodily encounter, Rotterdam-based artist Ash Kilmartin writes on the work of Alexis Hunter (1948–2014) in An Emergency Exit Sealed Shut at Kunstverein, Amsterdam.
Ngā Huarere o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa: Pacific Weathers
By Melody Nixon
01.08.2023
US- and Aotearoa-based writer Melody Nixon responds to digital artworks in Te Moana Nui a Kiwa; a weather station in the World Weather Network project featuring works by over twenty artists from Aotearoa and Oceania. One of twenty-eight stations in the project, the station featured online artworks by Kalisolaite ‘Uhila, Denise Batchelor and Maureen Lander, The Breath of Weather Collective, and a collaboration between Janine Randerson, Ron Bull, Rachel Shearer, Stefan Marks and glaciologist Heather Purdie. Nixon discusses how a selection of these works may reorient our approaches to the climate crisis.
On Measuring Distance: THE FIELD
By Helen Hughes
12.07.2023
Art historian Helen Hughes examines how THE FIELD—featuring work by Ming Ranginui, Shannon Te Ao and Shiraz Sadikeen, and curated by Tamsen Hopkinson at Gertrude Contemporary in Naarm Melbourne—inhabits the spaces between categories and haunts institutional memories through a unique curatorial approach.
Semantics of a City
By María Inés Plaza Lazo
26.06.2023
In May, publisher María Inés Plaza Lazo visited Ruth Buchanan’s A garden with bridges (spine, stomach, throat, ear), a walk-in sculpture and the result of a multi-part collaboration with the New Patrons that brings the synapses between all elements of Mönchengladbach, Germany, to new impulses.
soft and weak like water
By Amy Weng
13.06.2023
Reporting from a visit to South Korea, curator Amy Weng writes about how works by Yuki Kihara and Mataaho Collective connect the ambitious themes and ideas of the 14th Gwangju Biennale to specific histories from their homes in Aotearoa New Zealand and Moana-nui-a-Kiwa.
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series 2.3
By Ioana Gordon-Smith, Michel Mulipola, Skawennati, Solomon Enos
07.06.2023
Our third episode in this new talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, sees Michel Mulipola, Skawennati and Solomon Enos discuss the importance of shapeshifting, imagination and innovation in Indigenous storytelling, as well as in their respective practices. Written response by Aotearoa writer and curator Ioana Gordon-Smith.
Off Season by Richard Frater
By Henry Babbage
29.05.2023
Off Season by Richard Frater at the Kunstverein München sparked reflections, for writer Henry Babbage, on our asymmetrical relations with the avian life that shares our cities.
The Octopus Against a Sharp White Background
By Amit Noy
14.05.2023
Writer and choreographer Amit Noy reviews Atamira Dance Company’s performance of Te Wheke in the Lenape territory of New York City, and finds a work enlivened by indelible performances and critical Indigenous inquiry.
“I’m a burnt tongue, crying for the promised river.”
By Anne-Marie Te Whiu
28.04.2023
In a wide-ranging conversation ahead of the release of poet and performer Daley Rangi’s poetry collection Burnt Tongue, Associate Editor for HUM Anne-Marie Te Whiu talks with Rangi about the role of stories, language and community, on the Gadigal lands of Sydney, Australia.
Thinking Historically in the Present
By Megan Tamati-Quennell
17.04.2023
Having attended the opening week of Sharjah Biennial 15, Megan Tamati-Quennell writes about the work of Aotearoa artists Robyn Kahukiwa and Kahurangiariki Smith, included in this large-scale exhibition in the United Arab Emirates, and how Hoor Al Qasimi has carried the curatorial mantle from Okwui Enwezor to create an exhibition that both celebrates the late curator’s legacy and the diversity, solidarity and strength of non-Western art.
Rocks on Wheels and Flying Shoes
By Rosemary Forde
28.03.2023
Curator Rosemary Forde explores the art-historical and civic context in which artist Mike Hewson’s recent public playground in Naarm Melbourne, Rocks on Wheels, has landed.
“Sorry … Ummm”: Mystery, Mark Fisher, and Laughter
By Jasmine Gallagher
06.03.2023
Artist Campbell Patterson discusses his recent residencies, delayed by over two years due to the pandemic, at Headlands, Sausalito, and Gasworks, London, with friend and poet Jasmine Gallagher. They share their reflections on institutions of art and medicine, and on carving out their own spaces for the process of creation.
Reading Artists’ Books with Interjections from a Daphne on Pete’s Front Step
By Hamish Petersen
21.02.2023
HUM’s Senior Editor considers the unique capacities of artist books by exploring three Aotearoa artists’ international projects from recent years. They learn how the intimate encounter between page and reader relies on finely tuned elements to realise some kind of sovereignty over the artist’s story or recognition in their reader.
To Move Across a Window
By Francisco González Castro
31.01.2023
Texas-based artist and writer Francisco González Castro was first introduced to the many-armed project Beberemos El Vino Nuevo, Juntos! / Let Us Drink the New Wine, Together!, co-created by artist and educator alys longley and featuring no less than 19 Aotearoa contributors, just as the pandemic was escalating internationally. Here, he considers the lessons it presented to audiences in Santiago in the summer of 2022, just as the distance that defined the collaborators’ interactions was once again traversable.
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series 2.2
By Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Grace Iwashita-Taylor, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Lana Lopesi
12.12.2022
Our second episode in this four-part talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, sees Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Grace Iwashita-Taylor and Lana Lopesi discuss their recent writing initiatives, each focused on fostering the conditions that allow Indigenous writing to flourish. Written response by Aotearoa writer and curator Ioana Gordon-Smith.
A Place You Didn’t Know That You Didn’t Know About
By Chloe Lane
06.12.2022
Chloe Lane speaks to Aotearoa artist Imogen Taylor on finishing their six-month residency at The International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City, discussing Taylor's newest body of work, what it's like to be a contemporary artist from Aotearoa in New York City, and what living with a ball python can teach you about fear.
Stories of Becoming
By Harvey Bruce Milligan
15.11.2022
Sitting at a bar assembled from upcycled materials in Taipei, Harvey Bruce Milligan reports from Aotearoa-based artist Xin Cheng’s contribution to IsLand Bar, an annual event in which artists are invited to construct a bar as a platform for performance. Addressing Cheng's use of re-purposed materials as a basis for creativity and connection, he explores the artist's consideration of a broad material ecology and her pursuit of connecting people to the lives of things in a wider project of "regenerative re-making".
A Time of Uncertainties – Remodelling Reality
By Zsófia Danka
31.10.2022
Considering our altered experience of time in a moment marked by crisis, curator and art critic Zsófia Danka looks to Extended Present – Transitional Realities, a group exhibition at Budapest's Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art featuring Aotearoa New Zealand artist Dane Mitchell that explores notions of transience, the failure of modernity, and the possibility of change.
Still Alive
By Stuart Munro
18.10.2022
For this year's Aichi Triennale, writer Stuart Munro takes a trip to some of its more isolated venues to see works by Aotearoa artists Nikau Hindin and Yuki Kihara. Visiting buildings of historical significance where the various parts of the exhibition are installed, Munro unravels the far-reaching connections of Hindin and Kihara's contributions to family, survival and place.
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series 2.1
By Ioana Gordon-Smith, Rosanna Raymond, Tanu Gago
10.10.2022
Our first episode in this four-part talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, has Rosanna Raymond and Tanu Gago reflecting on recent international projects and the difficulties of being Moana artists working in countries with cultural amnesia over their colonial pasts. Written response by Aotearoa writer and curator Ioana Gordon-Smith.
Aotearoa Reviews its Official Participation in the Venice Biennale
By Anna Brown, Bruce Barber, Heather Galbraith, Hutch Wilco, James Goggin, Jennifer Flay, Jhana Millers, Julia Holderness, Laura Preston, Michael Stevenson, Ron Hanson, Sophie Thorn, Tessa Giblin, Tessa Laird
26.09.2022
In light of the current review of Aotearoa New Zealand’s ‘official’ presence at the Venice Biennale, HUM invited responses from New Zealanders on- and off-shore who have visited or been involved in ‘New Zealand at Venice’ projects, as artists, pavilion attendants, exhibition installers or designers, to enable insights into how involvement in (or experience of) our previous national pavilions have influenced people’s own careers, and the profile of contemporary art from Aotearoa.