Sriwhana Spong, 'Instrument H (Monster Chicken)', 2021, bronze (live performance). Photo: Zan Wimberley.

Writing

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.

Project

On Civicness and participating in public life through art practice

Panel discussion in Berlin

On 2 October 2021, Contemporary HUM continues its series of panel discussions, this time focusing on Aotearoa’s large artist contingent in Berlin, and throughout Europe.

This conversation explored the idea of ‘civicness’ and how it is tied to social responsibility within a global community, taken from the perspective of three artists from Aotearoa who are actively taking part in public life through their practice. What does collective work or cooperation with others allow in contrast to an individual practice, and is authorship important in a collaborative project? What does a site-specific response look like when working in situ within vastly different contexts, from art institutions and public theatres to the NFT market? Is there a relation to be traced between civicness and social change and what tools can be used when attempting to rethink power relations?

Guest speakers include Glasgow-based Cat Auburn; Berlin-based Ruth Buchanan; and Warsaw-based Daniel Malone. HUM’s Editor Pauline Autet moderated the discussion.

Project

Kunst Kopfüber / Art Upside Down

Partnership

The Goethe-Institut New Zealand and Contemporary HUM present a series of portraits about New Zealand artists who have found a new physical - and artistic - home in Germany. Kunst Kopfüber / Art Upside Down invites six international writers and curators to look at the practice of six contemporary artists from Aotearoa working across a variety of mediums, from video art to painting; large-scale installation to poetry. The written portraits about contemporary painter Sam Rountree Williams and poet Hinemoana Baker kick off this collaborative series.

Photo: Fred Dott. Courtesy Künstlerhaus Bremen.

Calendar

Ruth Buchanan, *INNEN

15 October —
26 November 2023

Künstlerhaus Bremen, Bremen, Germany

Installation view of the exhibition SKIN IN THE GAME – Ruth Buchanan, Otobong Nkanga, Collier Schorr, Rosemarie Trockel, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Andrea Zittel at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2023; Photo: Frank Sperling.

Calendar

Ruth Buchanan, SKIN IN THE GAME

14 September 2023 —
07 January 2024

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany

Installation View: Ruth Buchanan, A garden with bridges (spine, stomach, throat, ear) (2023), A project for the New Patrons of Mönchengladbach. Photo: Florian Wagner.

Writing

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.

Antonia Barnett Mcintosh, 'Water Walk', 2012, North Norway Festival (detail). Courtesy Bundanon Art Gallery.

Calendar

12 Aotearoa artists, The Polyphonic Sea

08 July —
08 October 2023

Bundanon Art Gallery, Shoalhaven, Australia

Calendar

Ruth Buchanan, A Garden with Bridges (spine, stomach, throat, ear)

07 May 2023 —
07 May 2028

jobcenter Mönchengladbach, Germany

Writing

Purple Rain

By Clémentine Deliss

07.06.2022

Writer and curator Clémentine Deliss reviews Aotearoa artist Ruth Buchanan’s solo exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland, an artwork as exhibition that reconfigures collecting history, curatorial practices and institutional norms.

Calendar

Ruth Buchanan, Heute nacht geträumt: Pre-history – Future

19 March —
14 August 2022

Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Writing

On Civicness and Participating in Public Life through Art Practice - Panel discussion transcript

By Cat Auburn, Daniel Malone, Pauline Autet, Ruth Buchanan

14.12.2021

For Contemporary HUM’s third panel in October 2021, On Civicness, we sat down with Cat Auburn, Ruth Buchanan, and Daniel Malone in Berlin to talk about their practices, recent projects and what “civicness” means to them as Aotearoa artists working abroad—spanning Polish experimental theatre, the memory functions of NFTs and the power relations of collecting institutions. Read the full transcript of the panel discussion here!

Shannon Te Ao, 'my life as a tunnel' (video still), 2018, two-channel video, sound, duration 9 mins 48 secs. Courtesy of the artist.

Calendar

Ruth Buchanan, Emma Fitts, Lily Gentile and Shannon Te Ao, Evolution of Galaxies

08 April —
23 April 2022

MADA Gallery (Monash University), Melbourne, Australia

Writing

Caretaker to Caretaker

By Bopha Chhay, Paula Booker

18.01.2022

In Part Two of this interview, Vancouver-based Aotearoa curators Paula Booker and Bopha Chhay talk about Chhay’s work as director of non-profit artist-run initiative Artspeak, the challenges of maintaining a space during COVID-19, what decolonisation in art institutions can be like and working on unceded territory, and curating recent projects around the relationship between art and writing.

Writing

On Civicness and Participating in Public Life Through Art Practice - Artist Statements

14.12.2021

For Contemporary HUM’s third panel in October 2021, On Civicness, we invited Cat Auburn, Ruth Buchanan, and Daniel Malone in Berlin to talk about their practices, recent projects and what “civicness” means to them as Aotearoa artists working abroad. In Part One, the artists introduce their recent practice and consider their relationship to civicness, community and the public sphere through a chosen project.