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.
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.
Writing
“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.
Writing
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.
Writing
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.
Writing
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.
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
Championing Aotearoa New Zealand women artists
Partnership
Contemporary HUM is excited to launch our partnership with AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions. The Paris-based non-profit organisation, founded in 2014, focuses on the creation, indexation and distribution of information on women artists of the 20th century. During our partnership with AWARE we have worked on including more Aotearoa New Zealand women artists in their online profiles. AWARE is a great resource for championing women artists and we’re thrilled to be working with them. A huge thanks to Creative New Zealand for making this partnership possible.
Writing
Mataaho Collective at the Dhaka Art Summit
By Pauline Autet
21.04.2020
We finish our first series focusing on the Asia region with Contemporary HUM Editor Pauline Autet interviewing Mataaho Collective on their participation in the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh in February 2020, where they partook in panel discussions and practised a type of waiata (song) called a pātere.
Writing
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.
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.
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series
Partnership
A collaboration between In*ter*is*land Collective and Contemporary HUM consisting of four edited online talanoa (conversations) between several tagata Moana (Māori and Pasifika people) across the globe which centre around the principles of talanoa; ofa, mafana, malie and faka'apa'apa (love, warmth, humour and respect) and the ability to have a "reciprocal knowledge exchange".
The talanoa within this series will focus on topics such as life in the diaspora, moana futurism, queer identities, and ReMoanafication, and all will be individually responded to in written form by Anne-Marie Te Whiu (Te Rarawa), reminding us of our intricate connection and shared ancestry in Te Moananui-a-Kiwa.
A collaboration between In*ter*is*land Collective and Contemporary HUM consisting of four edited online talanoa (conversations) between several tagata Moana (Māori and Pasifika people) across the globe which centre around the principles of talanoa; ofa, mafana, malie and faka'apa'apa (love, warmth, humour and respect) and the ability to have a "reciprocal knowledge exchange".
The talanoa within this series will focus on topics such as life in the diaspora, moana futurism, queer identities, and ReMoanafication, and all will be individually responded to in written form by Anne-Marie Te Whiu (Te Rarawa), reminding us of our intricate connection and shared ancestry in Te Moananui-a-Kiwa.
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
Ilke Gers, in Border Buda
27 October 2023 —
27 October 2026
various locations in Brussels, Vilvoorde and Machelen, Belgium
Writing
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.
Writing
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.
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.
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.
Writing
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.
Writing
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.
Writing
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.
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.
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.
Writing
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.
Writing
“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.
