Identity
Writing
HUM live from the 2022 Venice Biennale
By Contemporary HUM
24.04.2022
From 20—24 April 2022, Contemporary HUM brings you live coverage, exclusive images and videos from the opening week of The Milk of Dreams, The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, including Yuki Kihara's Paradise Camp for the New Zealand Pavilion.
Writing
A painter’s painter
By Clare Gemima
07.02.2022
Aotearoa artist Christina Pataialii features in the fifth New Museum Triennial, one of the world’s leading exhibitions for emerging artists. New York-based writer Clare Gemima visits the exhibition and reflects on Pataialii’s rule-breaking approach to painting technique, and the artist’s search for a language for her family history, identity and the cultural “in-between”.
Writing
Vivian Lynn / Liliane Lijn
By Laura Castagnini
07.10.2021
Following her death in 2018, pioneering feminist artist Vivian Lynn is receiving unprecedented international attention, after a lifetime of exhibiting widely in Aotearoa, but never outside of New Zealand. Following her recent inclusion in the 13th Gwangju Biennale and a solo exhibition at Southard Reid, London, Laura Castagnini reflects on the long-overdue revival of feminist art practices from the 1980s, and considers the striking parallels between Lynn’s work and her London-based counterpart, Liliane Lijn.
Writing
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series
By Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Ariana Davis, Jaimie Waititi, Jessica Palalagi
25.09.2021
The final episode in our four-part talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, sees writer and poet Anne-Marie Te Whiu respond to a discussion between Ariana Davis, Jessica Palalagi and Jaimie Waititi as they explore the idea of ReMoanafication, individual and collective connections, and reclaiming narratives.
Writing
They Call Me The Believer
By Habib William Kherbek
21.09.2021
Michael Stevenson’s retrospective at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, traces a 35 year practice exploring the intricacies of storytelling and truth in popular culture, media and technology. In this piece, Habib William Kherbek explores how Stevenson’s practice calls into question the infrastructures of knowledge formation in a sprawling, fragmented exhibition from inside the belly of a whale.
Writing
On Louise Stevenson's 'Someplace Else'
By Chris Holdaway
24.08.2021
In Someplace Else, Louise Stevenson chronicles her complex and unfolding relationship with Hungary, travelling back and forth from Aotearoa since her first visit in 1991. In this elaborate, handbound mixed media book, Stevenson traces decades of travel with careful preservation of ephemera, annotating ticket stubs and found photographs with her own drawings and writing. In this piece, poet and bookmaker Chris Holdaway considers the memories that inhere in overlooked items, repurposed carefully by Stevenson as talismans of place and the passage of time.
Writing
A protest and a mourning ritual
By Michelangelo Corsaro
11.05.2021
In their work for the 13th Gwangju Biennale, the Bad Fiji Gyals call attention to the legacy of Girmitiya women, indentured labourers from the Indian subcontinent recruited by British colonial authorities to work on Fiji’s sugarcane plantations. Associate Curator Michelangelo Corsaro writes about the collaborative work of Aotearoa-based artist Quishile Charan and US-based artist Esha Pillay.
Writing
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series
By AJ Fata, Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Drew Broderick, Josh Tengan
29.05.2021
The third episode of our four-part talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, sees writer and poet Anne-Marie Te Whiu respond to a discussion between AJ Fata, Josh Tengan, and Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick who explore the concept of time and ancestral knowledge as a path for the historical future.
Writing
Time and Water
By Maya Wilson-Sanchez
03.09.2020
Presented earlier this year at Oakville Galleries in Canada, Shannon Te Ao's two-channel video and sound installation Ka mua, ka muri recently opened at Remai Modern, Saskatoon. In this part essay, part dialogue, writer Maya Wilson-Sanchez examines Te Ao's new project, and meditates on the relationships between indigenous populations in colonised nations.
Writing
Forever Fresh
By Jessica Palalagi
06.11.2020
Jessica Palalagi, co-founder of the In*ter*is*land Collective, describes how their physical base in London, MOKU Pacific HQ, London, has served as a place for tagata Moana in the UK to create and meet since its inception in 2018, and reflects on the highs and lows of the past three years, including their exhibition in late 2019, Mana Moana, Mana Wahine.
Writing
Abstracting Ambivalence
By Eloise Callister-Baker
25.06.2020
From putting her Doctor of Fine Arts on hold to dealing with the isolation caused by the Coronavirus lockdown, Vietnamese/Aotearoa artist Anh Trần discusses why she wanted to take on the two-year Rijksakademie artist program in the Netherlands, her move to Amsterdam and how it's impacted her practice and life.
Writing
The Near Side
By Jon Bywater
13.05.2020
The 22nd Biennale of Sydney opened on 14 March 2020 and unfortunately had to close its doors only nine days later due to Covid-19. Prior to its closing, writer Jon Bywater managed to visit NIRIN, looking in particular at participating artists from Aotearoa including Emily Karaka, Elisapeta Heta & John Miller, Lisa Reihana, Kulimoe’anga ‘Stone’ Maka, and FAFSWAG.
Writing
Situated practices
By Kathryn Weir, Zhang Hanlu
07.03.2020
Held at Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, the most recent iteration of the ongoing project Cosmopolis included Aotearoa artists Lisa Reihana and Nandita Kumar amongst 40 international artists, all exploring technology and alternative ontologies. Chief curator, Kathryn Weir, and associated curator Zhang Hanlu share their reflections on Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human.
Writing
Handshake 5: In Dialogue
By Roseanne Bartley
22.01.2020
A look at Handshake, a project dedicated to developing emerging New Zealand jewellers nationally and internationally, and their recent exchange with Coda Museum in the Netherlands. Participating jewellers from Aotearoa include Neke Moa, Vivien Atkinson, Sarah Read, Becky Bliss, Vanessa Arthur, Sarah Walker-Holt, Sandra Schmid, Nadene Carr, Caroline Thomas, Brendon Monson, Nik Hanton, and Kelly McDonald.
Writing
The Discreet Charm of Chance
By Jari Niesner
23.08.2019
In her recent exhibition Following the Rubber Trails, at Frappant Galerie in Hamburg, Germany, Xin Cheng addresses the politics, history and philosophy of rubber, in its varying forms. Writer Jari Nieser explores the artist's performance, film and installation.
Writing
Screaming Strawbears and other Strange Engagements
By Tessa Laird
05.07.2019
From Morris dancing to costume making, Berlin-based artist Matthew Cowan and arts writer Tessa Laird discuss Cowan's interest in folklore, the function of tradition in the modern world and the influence of surrealism on his practice. Cowan's exhibition The Scream of the Strawbear opens at Kunsthalle Giessen in Germany on 7 September 2019.
Writing
Raw Matériel
By Emil McAvoy
10.06.2019
Within the greater context of the recent massacre in Christchurch, San Fransisco-based New Zealand photographer Jono Rotman discusses his new work Matériel which depicts a series of privately owned guns in the US, and his recent publication Mongrelism, which features the New Zealand-based gang, the Mighty Mongrel Mob.
Writing
Whose Oceania?
By James Belich, Lana Lopesi, Matariki Williams, Pauline Autet
14.11.2018
Missed HUM's panel discussion Whose Oceania? in London? We're excited to publish the transcript of this discussion, which proved to be a stimulating talk interrogating the themes and issues addressed in the exhibition Oceania at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, as well as the responses to it from across Te Moana Nui a Kiwa.
Writing
Push and Pull
By Jessica Douglas
25.10.2018
In the wake of recent discussions of London-based Francis Upritchard's work, Jessica Douglas views the exhibition Wetwang Slack, on now at the Barbican Centre in London, through the aesthetic quality and craftsmanship of Upritchard's work, alongside the wider consequences of her practice.
Writing
Mana Moana in the UK’s year of Captain Cook
By Ahilapalapa Rands, Jo Walsh
21.09.2018
London-based cultural producer Jo Walsh and artist Ahilapalapa Rands discuss some of the exhibitions and programmes taking place in the UK to mark the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook's departure to the Pacific, which also resonates to many as the start of colonisation in Moana-Nui-A-Kiwa. In this conversation piece, Rands and Walsh focus in on the projects they have been involved in, working with The British Library, Whitby Library and other UK institutions, and their efforts to disrupt the major narratives surrounding Cook.
Writing
Feminist Hieroglyphics
By Louise Lever
25.06.2018
A conversation with London-based artist Sriwhana Spong about Spong's practice and in particular her recent video work A hook but no fish, 2017, originally presented at the Pump House Gallery in London, which speculates upon a secret language invented by a mystic 12th century abbess, Hildegard of Bingen.
Writing
Maddie Leach: The Grief Prophesy
By Hjalmar Falk
08.06.2018
Maddie Leach's project The Grief Prophesy, created for the Gothenburg International Biennale for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) 2017, addresses the disturbing and intriguing circumstances surrounding an alleged Satanic murder, committed by members of a well-known Swedish black metal band. Swedish historian Hjalmar Falk discusses the work.
Writing
He Landed in a Place of Absolute Magic
By Hamish Coney, Kevin Ireland
03.04.2018
Although born in Yorkshire, the late artist Michael Illingworth immigrated to Aotearoa at age 20 in the early 1950s, before returning to England and Europe for a brief but formative period in 1959. Hamish Coney interviews the poet and writer Kevin Ireland OBE, one of Illingworth’s oldest New Zealand friends, on their London years (1959-61); a period of, as Ireland explains, 'high-octane education and inspiration'.
Writing
Seeing documenta 14 from the other south
By Jon Bywater
20.10.2017
New Zealand critic Jon Bywater discusses documenta 14 and the work of participating artists from Aotearoa New Zealand, Ralph Hotere, Mataaho Collective and Nathan Pohio, marking the first time New Zealand artists have been included in documenta.
Writing
An interview with Bruce Barber
By Contemporary HUM
22.09.2017
As part of Contemporary HUM's series of interviews with New Zealand artists exhibiting during the 57th Venice Biennale, we talk with Bruce Barber about his work Party without Party (2017), included in the exhibition Personal Structures: Open Borders at the Palazzo Bembo.
Writing
Islands on Sale
By Alastair Carruthers, Contemporary HUM, Mataaho Collective, Tessa Giblin
05.08.2017
In this panel discussion between Erena Baker and Bridget Reweti (Mataaho Collective), Alastair Carruthers (Commissioner of NZ at Venice 2017) and Tessa Giblin (Commissioner and Curator of Ireland at Venice 2017), the participants discuss globalisation, national identity, the politics of representation and New Zealand's role in contemporary international art discourse.
Writing
Luke Willis Thompson: A Sister Image
By Frances Loeffler
15.07.2017
Frances Loeffler writes on London-based New Zealand artist Luke Willis Thompson's residency at the Chisenhale Gallery in London, culminating in autoportrait (2017), a video portrait of Diamond Reynolds reflecting Thompson's ongoing enquiry into questions of race, class and social inequality.
Writing
Nature at its Queerest
By Ulrike Gerhardt
20.05.2017
Ulrike Gerhardt reponds to Berlin-based New Zealand artist Alicia Frankovich's first major solo show in Germany, OUTSIDE BEFORE BEYOND at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf.
Writing
Urges of Imperialism Unravelled
By Rhana Devenport
01.05.2017
Rhana Devenport, Curator of the New Zealand Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, sets the context for Emissaries, Lisa Reihana's exhibition representing Aotearoa New Zealand at the 57th Biennale di Venezia.
Writing
A New Commonwealth Internationalism
By Aaron Lister, Damian Skinner
01.03.2017
Writer and curator Aaron Lister talks to art historian Damien Skinner about the 'New Commonwealth Internationalism', a moment of post-WWII postcolonial internationalism in the British art scene, and its influence on British and New Zealand art history.