Calendar
Calendar
The HUM calendar features exhibitions & events by New Zealand arts practitioners working or living abroad.
Cat Auburn, Carpet Territory
36 Lime Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
09 October —
17 October 2021
Carpet Territory is an exhibition by Aotearoa artist Cat Auburn, with Alan Lynn and Jessica Ramm. ALR are an artist-researcher group with deep interests in ‘the ability to know’ and structures that undermine that ability. They create work at the intersection of their research interests and practices: the slippery process of remembering, borrowing, erasing, forgetting and re-discovering.
Carpet Territory is the culmination of a year-long digital collaboration in which ALR explore the fear of physical and ethical contagion. This fear flows from an awareness of the struggles associated with late capitalism and contradictions we face whilst trapped in systems that command our complicity. ALR use an Oriental rug as a provocation to work through theoretical and ethical concerns surrounding contradictions present in objects, narratives, embodiment, and identity. In particular, they address the performative metaphor of ‘trying to get off the carpet upon which we stand’ (an impossibility), and ‘pulling the rug out from underneath someone’ (a betrayal). Working within the wider context of the pandemic necessitated a shift into a technological space in which ALR’s bodies were constrained. The result is a series of art objects and a video in which three autotheoretical protagonists adopt distinct personas roughly characterised as ‘Compromised, ‘Contaminated’ and ‘Thwarted’ as they grapple with their awareness of an unspecified malignant presence.
Carpet Territory is an exhibition by Aotearoa artist Cat Auburn, with Alan Lynn and Jessica Ramm. ALR are an artist-researcher group with deep interests in ‘the ability to know’ and structures that undermine that ability. They create work at the intersection of their research interests and practices: the slippery process of remembering, borrowing, erasing, forgetting and re-discovering.
Carpet Territory is the culmination of a year-long digital collaboration in which ALR explore the fear of physical and ethical contagion. This fear flows from an awareness of the struggles associated with late capitalism and contradictions we face whilst trapped in systems that command our complicity. ALR use an Oriental rug as a provocation to work through theoretical and ethical concerns surrounding contradictions present in objects, narratives, embodiment, and identity. In particular, they address the performative metaphor of ‘trying to get off the carpet upon which we stand’ (an impossibility), and ‘pulling the rug out from underneath someone’ (a betrayal). Working within the wider context of the pandemic necessitated a shift into a technological space in which ALR’s bodies were constrained. The result is a series of art objects and a video in which three autotheoretical protagonists adopt distinct personas roughly characterised as ‘Compromised, ‘Contaminated’ and ‘Thwarted’ as they grapple with their awareness of an unspecified malignant presence.
Cat Auburn in residency
D6 Culture Newcastle, U.K.
01 May 2019 —
01 May 2020
In the context of Brexit and the shadow of Windrush, the 2019-22 programme There is Beauty in this Journey seeks to redress the sensationalism and bias around migration stories through a shared, rich and responsive exploration of landscape, diversity and cultural heritage.
Cat Auburn is currently D6's artist in residence as part of the programme, There is Beauty in this Journey. Whilst she is there she will organise local museum tours and workshops to investigate themes of objects, symbolism and colonialism. Cat Auburn is an artist from New Zealand, currently based in the North East of England. Her interdisciplinary art practice explores secondary or hidden narratives; investigating how culture is constructed, reinforced, and strategically employed.
In the context of Brexit and the shadow of Windrush, the 2019-22 programme There is Beauty in this Journey seeks to redress the sensationalism and bias around migration stories through a shared, rich and responsive exploration of landscape, diversity and cultural heritage.
Cat Auburn is currently D6's artist in residence as part of the programme, There is Beauty in this Journey. Whilst she is there she will organise local museum tours and workshops to investigate themes of objects, symbolism and colonialism. Cat Auburn is an artist from New Zealand, currently based in the North East of England. Her interdisciplinary art practice explores secondary or hidden narratives; investigating how culture is constructed, reinforced, and strategically employed.
Screening: Joanna Margaret Paul 'Through a Different Lens'
Various dates, Various venues
28 February —
22 July 2018
Spektrum, Berlin, Germany. - 22.07.2018
Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K. - 28.06.2018
OFFoff art cinema, Ghent, Belgium. - 8.05.2018
Cinema Museum, London, U.K. - 16.03.2018
CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland, U.K. - 28.02.2018
Joanna Margaret Paul was a New Zealand artist who pioneered interdisciplinary practice, working prolifically across the mediums of film, poetry and painting. Often shot and edited in camera, her film work chronicled motherhood and domestic life, the worn traces of urban settlement, and the persistent presence of the natural world. Presented by filmmaker and curator Peter Todd, this is the first collection to make Joanna Margaret Paul’s work available to an international audience. The programme contains 13 works shot in the 1970s and was commissioned by CIRCUITArtist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand with the support of Creative New Zealand. Screenings in London was followed by a discussion between curator Peter Todd and artist Kate Davis. The screening in Ghent includes a short film by Nova Paul in hommage to Joanna Margaret Paul.
Spektrum, Berlin, Germany. - 22.07.2018
Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K. - 28.06.2018
OFFoff art cinema, Ghent, Belgium. - 8.05.2018
Cinema Museum, London, U.K. - 16.03.2018
CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland, U.K. - 28.02.2018
Joanna Margaret Paul was a New Zealand artist who pioneered interdisciplinary practice, working prolifically across the mediums of film, poetry and painting. Often shot and edited in camera, her film work chronicled motherhood and domestic life, the worn traces of urban settlement, and the persistent presence of the natural world. Presented by filmmaker and curator Peter Todd, this is the first collection to make Joanna Margaret Paul’s work available to an international audience. The programme contains 13 works shot in the 1970s and was commissioned by CIRCUITArtist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand with the support of Creative New Zealand. Screenings in London was followed by a discussion between curator Peter Todd and artist Kate Davis. The screening in Ghent includes a short film by Nova Paul in hommage to Joanna Margaret Paul.
Cat Auburn: Preparing the Ground
Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
19 January —
12 March 2017
Auburn's new video work follows the act of preparing the ground conditions for an event in a Spanish Riding School (Vienna, Austria), where the sand floor of an historic ballroom-come-arena is graded for a five-hundred-year old dressage tradition; St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art (Glasgow, Scotland), home to the first Zen garden in the U.K. where pebbles are carefully raked into patterns to facilitate meditation; Dunstanburgh Castle (Northumberland, England) and the maintenance of grounds around the ruin. These are all sites at the intersection of tradition and tourism - locations where culture is constructed, maintained and performed. 'Preparing the Ground’ is a new film commissioned by Tyneside Cinema in partnership with Northumbria University for the 2016 Tyneside Cinema Graduate Artist in Residence. Further locations in Japan and New Zealand will be added to the project in 2017.
Read Contemporary HUM's essay Cat Auburn: Preparing the Ground written by Chloe Barker in response to this event.
Auburn's new video work follows the act of preparing the ground conditions for an event in a Spanish Riding School (Vienna, Austria), where the sand floor of an historic ballroom-come-arena is graded for a five-hundred-year old dressage tradition; St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art (Glasgow, Scotland), home to the first Zen garden in the U.K. where pebbles are carefully raked into patterns to facilitate meditation; Dunstanburgh Castle (Northumberland, England) and the maintenance of grounds around the ruin. These are all sites at the intersection of tradition and tourism - locations where culture is constructed, maintained and performed. 'Preparing the Ground’ is a new film commissioned by Tyneside Cinema in partnership with Northumbria University for the 2016 Tyneside Cinema Graduate Artist in Residence. Further locations in Japan and New Zealand will be added to the project in 2017.
Read Contemporary HUM's essay Cat Auburn: Preparing the Ground written by Chloe Barker in response to this event.