Exhibitions
Writing
HUM live from the 2019 Venice Biennale
By Contemporary HUM
07.05.2019
HUM brings you live blog posts, videos, and exclusive images from the opening week of May You Live In Interesting Times, The 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, including Dane Mitchell's Post hoc for the New Zealand Pavilion.
Writing
Spin Slowly, Fighting Gravity
By Samuel Walsh
04.02.2019
Arts facilitator and producer Samuel Walsh reflects on his residency at Zaratan - Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon, Portugal, where he was able to develop ideas for his own artist-run space, Strange Haven, in Tāmaki Makaurau. Although thousands of miles apart, Walsh and the facilitators of Zaratan discovered their shared joys and struggles of running an art space, and the importance of community in their practice.
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
Hotel Jaguar
By David Lillington
11.10.2018
HUM commissioned David Lillington to review Amanda Newall's recent project at Exposed Arts Projects in London, which occupies an old Jaguar car dealership. Newall's site-specific response, called Hotel Jaguar, encompasses an eclectic range of works and collaborations with other artists, on topics ranging from Jaguar and Brexit; Trump and witches; social dreaming and murders.
Project
Whose Oceania?
Panel discussion in London
Whose Oceania? is Contemporary HUM’s second public panel discussion, held on 29 September 2018 to coincide with the opening of the Oceania exhibition, on at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
This exhibition is a major international event for Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific, and we have decided to take the opportunity to bring together several professionals from different backgrounds and practices in Māori and Pacific art, as well as colonial studies, to offer informed and critical responses to the show.
Writing
Dane Mitchell: An Aesthetic Contagion
By Marie de Brugerolle
06.09.2018
Dane Mitchell's exhibition OTIUM #3 at the Institut d'art contemporain - Villeurbanne in France, was an invitation to produce and exhibit works related to the dimensions of time and space, as part of an ongoing prospective series of exhibitions linked to 'métaphysiques cosmomorphes', a term taken from Pierre Montebello's philosophical research. French art historian and curator Marie de Brugerolle explores Mitchell's work within this context and his wider practice.
Writing
Kate Newby: I can’t nail the days down
By Chloe Geoghegan
14.08.2018
I can't nail the days down is Brooklyn-based Kate Newby's first Austrian solo exhibition, presented at Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna in 2018. Based both inside and outside of the Kunsthalle, the work invited visitors to take a closer look at Newby's engagements with the context of exhibition.
Writing
The Symbolic and Actual Order of Things
By Carter Imrie-Milne
25.05.2018
Auckland-born Zac Langdon-Pole's recent accolades include the Charlotte Prinz Scholarship in Darmstadt, Germany, being shortlisted for the BMW Art Journey Prize, and being one of the prestigious ARS VIVA prize recipients. Carter Imrie-Milne explores the artist's most recent series of objects and experiences featured in his presentation of the ARS VIVA at S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Belgium.
Writing
An interview with Martin Basher
By André Hemer
16.03.2018
A conversation between two offshore New Zealand artists: Vienna-based André Hemer and New York-based Martin Basher. Their chat touches on producing art in Trump-era US, display-based practice, Basher’s doctorate, and living in NYC as a New Zealander.
Writing
Ka Mua, Ka Muri
By Louise Garrett
28.02.2018
Nathan Pohio’s Raise the anchor, unfurl the sails, set course to the centre of an ever setting sun! was one of three projects by artists from Aotearoa New Zealand presented at documenta 14. Louise Garrett explores Pohio’s presentation in Kassel and invites the artist himself to reflect on his participation and to discuss the work he presented in Athens, documenta’s parallel location in 2017.
Writing
Learning from Athens (There and Elsewhere)
By Laura Preston, Wystan Curnow
18.12.2017
For over a year, Laura Preston was based in Athens to work as associate editor of documenta 14 publications, including South as a State of Mind released in four issues. HUM invited the art writer and editor to reflect on this experience, who in turn, extended the invitation to fellow New Zealander and distinguished art critic, curator and poet Wystan Curnow. What results is a two-part correspondence in which the pair reflect on their imagined and lived experiences of Europe coming from their other south.
Writing
NZ at Venice
By Will Gresson
20.11.2017
London-based New Zealand writer Will Gresson looks back at the way New Zealand has presented itself at the Venice Biennale, since first officially taking part in 2001. In particular, Gresson shares a personal response to the last five national projects and some thoughts on the relevance of cross-national presentations in the future.
Writing
An interview with Lisa Reihana
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 Lisa Reihana, New Zealand's representative at the Biennale about her experience in Venice.
Writing
An interview with Kāryn Taylor
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 with Kāryn Taylor about her work Field Notations, included in the exhibition Personal Structures: Open Borders at the Palazzo Bembo.
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.
Project
Islands on Sale
Panel discussion in London
A panel discussion organised by Contemporary HUM on globalisation, national identity and the politics of representation at New Zealand Studies Network conference ISLANDS ON SALE, Regent's University London, 1 July 2017.
Writing
An interview with Gregory Burke
By Mandy Alves
10.06.2017
Canadian writer Mandy Alves talks with New Zealand curator Gregory Burke about his role as CEO and Executive Director at the Remai Modern Art Gallery of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada.
Writing
HUM live from the 2017 Venice Biennale
By Contemporary HUM
08.05.2017
HUM brings you live blog posts and exclusive images from the opening week of Viva Arte Viva, The 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, between 8 - 15 May 2017, including Lisa Reihana: Emissaries for the New Zealand Pavilion.
Writing
An interview with Jennifer Flay, Director of FIAC
By Pauline Autet
18.03.2017
In this two-part interview, HUM's Editor Pauline Autet speaks with Jennifer Flay, Director of FIAC in Paris. In Part 2 we look back at Flay's departure from New Zealand 36 years ago and her initial years in France, before she became involved with FIAC. We ask how she was introduced to the gallery world, and about operating her own gallery in Paris, from 1991 to 2003.
Writing
A Man for all Seasons
By Anna Cahill
16.02.2017
Writer Anna Cahill looks at the life and work of New Zealand painter Douglas MacDiarmid, from his early life in Taihape and Christchurch to his life as an expatriate painter in Paris, where he has been living permanently since 1951.
Writing
Reporting from the Front Desk
By Chris Winwood
08.12.2016
Paris-based architect Chris Winwood considers Future Islands, the New Zealand contribution to the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016.
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.
Calendar
Natasha Matila-Smith, Deme Te Atawhai Scott, Salome Tanuvasa and Yvonne Todd
16 July —
14 November 2021
Paul Ramsay Galleries and ANZ/Zauner Grand Foyer, MAMA, Albury, Australia
Calendar
Simon Denny, INFORMATION (Today)
25 June —
10 October 2021
Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland
Calendar
Estella Castle, Land in the Bend of the River
12 June —
18 December 2021
Egham Museum, Egham, UK
Writing
Living Currency
By Henry Babbage
25.03.2021
In (working title) at gr_und project space in Berlin, Frankfurt-based New Zealand artist Alex Chalmers explores how the circulation of commodities shape our thresholds of political implication, drawing our attention to the global economy's reliance on an interdependent network of shipping and delivery services, and our own alienation as consumers from the labour that creates our goods.
Writing
An interview with Jennifer Flay, Director of FIAC
By Pauline Autet
30.01.2017
In this two-part interview, HUM's Editor Pauline Autet speaks to New Zealand-born Jennifer Flay, Director of FIAC in Paris. Part 1 looks at the role Flay played in the revival of FIAC since taking the helm 13 years ago and her early ambitions for the fair, through to the prestigious place it occupies in the French capital today.