Diaspora
Writing
HUM live from the 2024 Venice Biennale
16.04.2024
From 16–21 April 2024, Contemporary HUM will publish live coverage, exclusive images and videos from the opening week of Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, The 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Click through for coverage of the Aotearoa New Zealand artists presenting work in the curated section of the Biennale, as well as in other events held off-site.
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.
Calendar
Talanoa Forum: Moana Rising
10 October —
12 October 2023
Powerhouse Ultimo, Sydney, Australia
Calendar
Michael Parekowhai and Victoria Hunt, Dreamhome: Stories of Art and Shelter
03 December 2022 —
27 August 2023
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Calendar
Amrita Hepi, Interfacial Intimacies
08 June —
05 August 2023
Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart Tasmania, Australia
Writing
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.
Calendar
Li-Ming Hu, Double Foreign New Zealand Chinese Kitchen
22 October —
30 October 2022
Flux Factory, Governors Island, USA
Project
OCEANIA NOW: Contemporary Art from the Pacific
Partnership
Christie's, Paris presents OCEANIA NOW: Contemporary Art from the Pacific, a physical exhibition and an online sale, produced in collaboration with New Zealand gallerists Alison Bartley and John Gow. Featuring 36 works from 14 artists, many based in Aotearoa, this is the institution’s first dedicated auction of works by contemporary artists from the Pacific. HUM is thrilled to be a media partner of this unprecedented project, running from 11 February - 01 March 2022.
Writing
HUM travels to Berlin
By Contemporary HUM
05.10.2021
From 01 - 04 October 2021, the HUM team was in Berlin to host our third panel discussion On Civicness. While there, we took the opportunity to catch up with several New Zealand artists - Sam Rountree Williams, Joshua Rutter, Matthew Cowan, and Ben Cauchi - and learn about their current projects.
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
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
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
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
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
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
We See the Same Stars
By Gabriela Salgado, Sabine Casparie
16.11.2021
In this interview with Gabriela Salgado, former Artistic Director of Te Tuhi, Sabine Casparie sits down with the curator to discuss her new London-based project, Southern Stars, a platform connecting artists from the southern hemisphere. Casparie and Salgado discuss how the European art world is responding to new, Indigenous voices, and Southern Stars’ first exhibition, Golden Daughters of the Sun, featuring Aotearoa artist Salome Tanuvasa.
Project
HUM travels to Berlin
Studio visits
From 01 - 04 October 2021, the HUM team was in Berlin to host our third panel discussion, On Civicness and participating in public life through art practice. While there, we took the opportunity to catch up with several New Zealand artists and learn about their latest projects.
Writing
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series
By Afatasi The Artist, Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Momoe i manu ae ala atea’e Tasker
28.02.2021
In this first episode of our new special series of talanoa (online conversations) produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, Anne-Marie Te Whiu responds to a discussion between Afatasi the Artist and Momoe i manu ae ala atea’e Tasker on identity and how it's expressed in their creative practices, finding their community in various daily rituals while living in the diaspora, and maintaining their connections to 'home'.
Writing
Looking for Home
By Jungah Lee
13.01.2021
A look at Yona Lee's site-specific work En Route Home at the 2020 Busan Biennale, its references to migration, the concept of 'home', and our new and developing relationships towards stability and roots in the era of globalisation.
Writing
Everything Stops for the Baby
By Chloe Lane, Peter Gouge
23.09.2020
In this correspondence, writer Chloe Lane and artist Peter Gouge discuss the origins of Gouge’s MFA final exhibition at the University of Florida, the functionality of objects, the intersection of parenthood and practice, and the upcoming exhibition at Melanie Roger Gallery in Auckland where the documentation of Gouge's project will be displayed.
Writing
Permanent Migration
By Signe Rose
06.02.2020
In a letter to her husband sculptor Martyn Reynolds, artist Signe Rose reflects on their life in Vienna as parents and artists, having moved to Austria from New Zealand in 2010. She also shares about feeling like a constant tourist, and about the ways in which her art is viewed by both European and New Zealand audiences.
Writing
Oceania at the Met
By Maia Nuku
28.11.2018
Maia Nuku, Associate Curator for Oceanic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, talks about the ways in which new curatorial practices are bringing life to the Oceanic collection at the Met. Nuku's collaborative research projects sees new connections between Pacific artists, scholars, cultural practitioners, curators and conservators, as well as Digital and Education teams from within the museum, allowing an activation of objects, and a "complication of institutional narratives."
Writing
An interview with Francis Upritchard
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 to Francis Upritchard about her work in the Biennale.
Writing
A Material Direction
By Jodie Dalgleish
08.12.2016
Jodie Dalgleish talks to New Zealand/German artist André Hemer about his recent series A Hot Mess, his PhD practice and his experience as an ex-pat New Zealander.
Writing
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series
By Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Isoa Tupua, Lyall Hakaraia
04.04.2021
Our second offering in this four-part talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, sees Lyall Hakaraia and Isoa Tupua discuss queer communities/scenes in London, witnessing the bare minimum, gentrification, and how to clock an invite to a sex party. Written response by Brisbane-based poet, editor, weaver and festival director Anne-Marie Te Whiu.