Reviews
Writing
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.
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.
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
A Time of Uncertainties – Remodelling Reality
By Zsófia Danka
31.10.2022
Considering our altered experience of time in a moment marked by crisis, curator and art critic Zsófia Danka looks to Extended Present – Transitional Realities, a group exhibition at Budapest's Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art featuring Aotearoa New Zealand artist Dane Mitchell that explores notions of transience, the failure of modernity, and the possibility of change.
Writing
Still Alive
By Stuart Munro
18.10.2022
For this year's Aichi Triennale, writer Stuart Munro takes a trip to some of its more isolated venues to see works by Aotearoa artists Nikau Hindin and Yuki Kihara. Visiting buildings of historical significance where the various parts of the exhibition are installed, Munro unravels the far-reaching connections of Hindin and Kihara's contributions to family, survival and place.
Writing
FAFSWAG at documenta fifteen
By Will Fredo
20.09.2022
Berlin-based artist and writer Will Fredo discusses the decolonial gestures at play in Aotearoa-based art collective FAFSWAG’s contributions to documenta fifteen, encompassing works that champion unapologetic self-expression, queer joy and the power of futurity in rejecting colonial inheritances.
Writing
Meandering Gestures, Infiltrating Language
By Imaad Majeed
08.09.2022
Artist, curator and writer Imaad Majeed talks with Aotearoa artist Areez Katki about his participation in Language is Migrant, the latest edition of the international arts festival Colomboscope, in Sri Lanka, and about using embroidery and textiles to explore ideas of displacement, trajectories of violence, and the colonial legacy of his own Parsi heritage.
Writing
On Wet Ontologies, Fluid Hierarchies and Hope-Soaked Propositions at the 23rd Biennale of Sydney
By Emma O'Neill
26.08.2022
This year’s Biennale of Sydney, titled rīvus, included the work of Aotearoa-based artists Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi and Mataaho Collective. Emma O’Neill, a writer working on Gadigal Land, responds to the exhibition and some of the work presented by the 89 participants invited to interact with different forms and bodies of water.
Writing
documenta fifteen or lumbung one?
By Bruce E. Phillips
12.08.2022
For documenta fifteen, the arts collective FAFSWAG were invited to participate as members of the lumbung process established by this year’s curatorial collective ruangrupa. In the absence of the trophy artist phenomenon so entrenched within mega-exhibitions, Bruce E. Phillips responds to the work of different participating collectives exhibiting in Kassel and discusses how introducing a non-European exhibition-making concept into the heart of arguably Europe’s most revered art event was bound to confound those unwilling to consider a differing perspective.
Writing
Purple Rain
By Clémentine Deliss
07.06.2022
Writer and curator Clémentine Deliss reviews Aotearoa artist Ruth Buchanan’s solo exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland, an artwork as exhibition that reconfigures collecting history, curatorial practices and institutional norms.
Writing
Reimagined Futures
By Johanna Bear
23.03.2022
Featuring work from Aotearoa artists Edith Amituanai, Brian Fuata, Christina Pataialii, Shannon Novak and Shannon Te Ao as well as collaborators from Aotearoa in the project Kā Paroro o Haumumu: Coastal Flows / Coastal Incursions, this piece from writer and curator Johanna Bear considers the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial’s celebration of Indigenous futures, collaborative and community-based practices, and new ways of understanding the world around us.
Writing
Naahdohbii: To Draw Water & What It Means To Come Together
By Franchesca Hebert-Spence
10.03.2022
Featuring Aotearoa artists Israel Birch, Nikau Hindin, Jeremy Leatinu’u, Nova Paul, Rachel Rakena and Keri Whaitiri, the inaugural Indigenous Triennial at the Winnipeg Art Gallery/Qaumajuq (WAG/Q) in Winnipeg, Naadohbii: To Draw Water, presents a collaborative curatorial approach to Indigenous artists’ work—Franchesca Hebert-Spence visits the exhibition and talks to the curators about the curatorial process, the opportunities offered through cross-cultural exchange, and the adherence to the specificities of place and history fostered through the exhibition.
Writing
Settling troubled waters with Emma McIntyre
By Megan Macnaughton
23.02.2022
A new series of works by LA-based Aotearoa painter Emma McIntyre form the artist’s first solo exhibition in Europe, Up bubbles her amorous breath—a feminised reimagining of mythological landscapes and our relationship to them. Writer Megan Macnaughton visits the exhibition and talks with McIntyre about her developing process of painting, using her whole body, to create vividly imagined abstract works.
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
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
Plant Data
By Alice Bonnot
22.07.2021
Porto-based New Zealand artist Yota Ayaan investigates the possibilities of human-plant communication in Plant Data, an exhibition at the Galeria da Biodiversidade, Centro Ciência Viva, in Porto’s Botanical garden. After visiting the show, writer and curator Alice Bonnot discusses here the urgent lessons that can be gleaned from it in the current climate crisis.
Writing
Ann Shelton’s Strange Flowers Set the Stage
By Katie White
14.04.2021
Inspired by ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, Ann Shelton's photographs subtly recall both ancient and contemporary female archetypes and the subversive histories of natural medicine - a sharp reminder of our forgotten affinities with nature in the current moment of climate crisis and the ongoing politicisation of female bodies.
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
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
Between Light and Memory
By Sharmini Aphrodite
23.03.2020
In the first essay in our new series focusing on New Zealand arts activity in the Asia region, writer Sharmini Aphrodite reviews André Hemer's show, Images Cast by the Sun, at Yavuz Gallery in Singapore in 2019. Finding parallels between the paintings location in Singapore and their creation in Vienna, Aphrodite articulates their visceral qualities, and ability to transcend materiality.
Writing
Stirring Motion
By Stefanie Bräuer
20.02.2020
Art Historian Stefanie Bräuer takes us through Museum Tinguely’s recent comprehensive exhibition of New Zealand artist Len Lye, exploring Lye’s international life, his move from film to kinetic sculptures and the relationship between the museum's namesake, fellow kinetic sculptor Jean Tinguely.
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
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
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
With the sun aglow, I have my pensive moods
By Andrew Clifford
04.12.2017
Andrew Clifford writes on Shannon Te Ao’s installation, With the sun aglow I have my pensive moods, one of four key new commissions for the 2017 Edinburgh Art Festival.
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
Preparing the Ground
By Chloe Barker
22.04.2017
Arts Programme Coordinator at Tyneside Cinema Chloe Barker reflects on New Zealand artist Cat Auburn's new moving image work Preparing the Ground (2017) and first solo exhibition in the UK, at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne.