Conversations
Project
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.
Writing
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.
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.
Writing
“Sorry … Ummm”: Mystery, Mark Fisher, and Laughter
By Jasmine Gallagher
06.03.2023
Artist Campbell Patterson discusses his recent residencies, delayed by over two years due to the pandemic, at Headlands, Sausalito, and Gasworks, London, with friend and poet Jasmine Gallagher. They share their reflections on institutions of art and medicine, and on carving out their own spaces for the process of creation.
Writing
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series 2.2
By Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Grace Iwashita-Taylor, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Lana Lopesi
12.12.2022
Our second episode in this four-part talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, sees Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Grace Iwashita-Taylor and Lana Lopesi discuss their recent writing initiatives, each focused on fostering the conditions that allow Indigenous writing to flourish. Written response by Aotearoa writer and curator Ioana Gordon-Smith.
Writing
A Place You Didn’t Know That You Didn’t Know About
By Chloe Lane
06.12.2022
Chloe Lane speaks to Aotearoa artist Imogen Taylor on finishing their six-month residency at The International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City, discussing Taylor's newest body of work, what it's like to be a contemporary artist from Aotearoa in New York City, and what living with a ball python can teach you about fear.
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.
Project
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series 2
Partnership
Following on from our 2021 talanoa series, this is a new round of edited online talanoa (conversations) between several tagata Moana (Māori and Pasifika people) across the globe, once again produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective.
Each talanoa in this series focuses on different topics central to life in the diaspora and is individually responded to in writing by Ioana Gordon-Smith, a Sāmoan/Pākehā arts writer and curator living in Aotearoa.
Writing
Chance and Impermanence
By Daria de Beauvais, Kate Newby
27.07.2022
Texas-based Aotearoa artist Kate Newby talks to Palais de Tokyo curator Daria de Beauvais about Reclaim the Earth, traversing the ecological questions at the heart of the exhibition, Newby's collaborative process of art making, and her new works commissioned for the exhibition.
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
Listening Like Breathing
By Ron Hanson
09.12.2020
Although an influential figure in the development of sound art, New York-based Annea Lockwood hasn't experienced the same level of exposure in New Zealand as she has experienced internationally. In this piece, White Fungus' editor Ron Hanson outlines his journey discovering Lockwood's work and speaks to the artist about her impressive career and pivotal developments in her field.
Writing
Plants, love, and multispecies engagements
By Essi Kausalainen, Robyn Maree Pickens
09.07.2020
After first meeting at the Saari Residence in the southwest of Finland at the start of 2020, Aotearoa writer and poet Robyn Maree Pickens and Finnish performance artist Essi Kausalainen discuss how their diverse practices can mirror each other, about plants and the more-than-human world, along with the ramifications of Covid on their wellbeing and practice.
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
Making Art in the time of COVID-19
By Chloe Lane
28.05.2020
Two US-based New Zealand artists - Amy Howden-Chapman in New York and Emma McIntyre in Los Angeles - share their experience of the Covid-19 lockdown, how it has impacted their practice and everyday life, and discuss the possible ecological outcomes of the lockdown, including the shifting of art practices to the online world.
Writing
An interview with Dane Mitchell
By Contemporary HUM
24.06.2019
HUM's editorial team sat down with artist Dane Mitchell to discuss his work for the New Zealand Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, Post hoc. The work, both ambitious in scale and subject, has sparked discussions on global climate change and meditations on what has truly disappeared from the world.
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
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
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
Learning from Athens (There and Elsewhere)
By Laura Preston, Wystan Curnow
18.12.2017
This is the second part of a correspondence between Laura Preston and Wystan Curnow, in which the two writers' share memories and snapshots of journeys through the art world from 1987 to 2007 and 2017.
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
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.
Writing
Passing Torches
By Barbara Sirieix, Caterina Riva
08.12.2016
A conversation between writers and curators Barbara Sirieix and Caterina Riva, reflecting on their practices and time spent in Aotearoa at The Physics Room in Christchurch and Artspace New Zealand in Auckland, and their work exhibiting Aotearoa artists Tahi Moore, Alicia Frankovich and William Hsu.
Writing
Music from the End of the World
By Sharmini Aphrodite
28.01.2021
In September 2019, Joseph Michael's installation Voices for the Future lit up the United Nations, General Assembly and Secretariat buildings in New York ahead of the UN’s Climate Action Summit and global school strikes. Sharmini Aphrodite talks to the artist about his process of recording the icebergs featured in the artwork and reflects on the dissolution of the spatial and aural boundaries between Antarctica, New Zealand and New York.
Writing
Taiwan-New Zealand Dialogue
By Catherine George, Catherine Lee, Isis Mingli Lee, Ron Hanson, Wan-Jung Wei
22.12.2020
A panel discussion exploring new ways of making art and connecting with audiences amid Covid-19 in New Zealand and Taiwan. Held on October 24 2020 and organised by the Taiwan Cultural Policy Research Association, as part of the Tua-Tiu-Tiann International Festival of Arts (TTTIFA).
Project
Taiwan-New Zealand Dialogue on Cultural Exchange Policies amid Covid-19
Panel discussion in Taipei
Contemporary HUM is a proud partner of the Taiwan-New Zealand Dialogue on Cultural Exchange Policies amid Covid-19 panel discussion, organised by the Taiwan Cultural Policy Research Association. Held in the context of the Tua-Tiu-Tiann International Festival of Arts (TTTIFA) in Taipei, this panel discussion seeks to unpack the impact of Covid-19 on arts practitioners and the need for cultural exchange and dialogue.
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
Behind the scenes of Post hoc in Venice
By Amber Baldock, Chris Sharp, Hope Wilson, Jude Chambers, Zara Stanhope
22.07.2019
What does it take to represent New Zealand at the Venice Biennale? How are five-metre tall, 500kg sculptures installed and secured? How do you vie for an audience’s attention on an island full of exhibitions and artworks? HUM interviews the team behind Post hoc, at the New Zealand Pavilion for the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Writing
Design solves problems and art creates problems
By Eleanor Woodhouse
23.04.2019
A closer look at Biljana Popovic's 12-month Visual Arts Residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, and how her previous work as a commercial designer informs her current visual arts practice by integrating elements of interior design and architecture.