Ecology

Calendar

Taipei Popcorn, L’œil du cyclone (Eye of the Cyclone)

07 October 2022 —
08 January 2023

Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, France

Calendar

Jen Valender, Broken Chord

02 September —
30 October 2022

The Museum of Art and Culture Lake Macquarie, Booragul, Australia

Calendar

Karma Barnes and Sarah Hudson, Wild Pigment Project

17 September —
03 December 2022

form and concept, Santa Fe, USA

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

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

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

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

Some Kind of Travelogue

By Esther Lu

18.06.2021

Aotearoa-based artist Sorawit Songsataya’s practice explores the many tangents that connect and redefine our understandings of subjectivity and ecology. Songsataya was invited to participate in the group show, The Turn of the Fifth Age, at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space in Bandung, Indonesia, earlier this year, where they exhibited their work Jupiter. Here, co-curator Esther Lu responds to that work.

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

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

Situated practices

By Kathryn Weir, Zhang Hanlu

07.03.2020

Held at Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, the most recent iteration of the ongoing project Cosmopolis included Aotearoa artists Lisa Reihana and Nandita Kumar amongst 40 international artists, all exploring technology and alternative ontologies. Chief curator, Kathryn Weir, and associated curator Zhang Hanlu share their reflections on Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human.

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

“Nothing consoles you like despair”

By Boaz Levin

22.03.2019

The work of Berlin-based artist Richard Frater addresses the devastating impact of climate change on our environment, and the despair and human complicity felt in this global phenomenon. In this essay, artist, writer, and curator Boaz Levin unpacks Frater's recent exhibitions in Germany and New Zealand.

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.

Writing

Singing with the Bees

By Pauline Autet

08.12.2016

HUM's Editor Pauline Autet reviews Anne Noble's exhibition Abeille, presented at the Abbaye de Noirlac in France from June to November 2016.

Project

Yuki Kihara at the 59th Venice Biennale

Partnership

Small island ecologies, climate change, queer rights, Gauguin’s gaze, intersectionality and decolonization; these are just some of the topics explored by interdisciplinary artist Yuki Kihara in her project Paradise Camp, representing New Zealand at the 59th Venice Biennale in Italy. HUM is proud to be a media partner of this exciting project, open to the public from 23 April - 27 November 2022.

Calendar

Anne Noble, Point of No Return. Attunement of Attention

24 April —
20 June 2021

NART – Narva Art Residency, Estonia

Calendar

Israel Birch, Nikau Hindin, Jeremy Leatinu’u, Nova Paul, Rachael Rakena, and Keri Whaitiri at Naadohbii: To Draw Water

14 August 2021 —
17 February 2022

WAG-Qaumajuq, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Canada

Calendar

Yota Ayaan, Plant Data

06 June —
27 June 2021

Galeria da Biodiversidade, Porto, Portugal

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

Social Imagination

By Lance Pearce

20.11.2020

Xin Cheng's Seeing Like a Forest, made during her study at HFBK - University Of Fine Arts Hamburg from 2017-2019, focuses on issues such as sustainability, communities, and resourcefulness. Artist and writer Lance Pearce discusses these themes and their relevance to a world in the midst of a pandemic.

Writing

Treatise as Exhibition

By Amira Gad

10.08.2020

In Part Two of this two-part conversation, curator Amira Gad and artist Simon Denny discuss Mine, an exhibition at MONA in Australia for which Denny created a 3D model of a proposed worker’s cage for Amazon; Proof of Work, Denny's 2018 curatorial project at Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin; as well as his participation in Vaudeville, a theatrical journalism experience organised by the Financial Times.

Writing

Treatise as Exhibition

By Amira Gad

20.07.2020

In the first piece of this two-part conversation, Aotearoa artist Simon Denny speaks about his recent projects, including his 2020 solo show at Altman Siegel in San Francisco which included former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's scarves and 'Tech-Bro' Patagonia vests, and about corresponding with Peter Thiel after he came to see Denny's show at Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland in 2017.

Writing

Odysseus escapes the cyclops

By Zoe Crook

10.06.2020

A review of Invisible: a collaborative exhibition between the Detroit Cranbrook Academy of Art, Wellington’s Massey University and the Wrocław Academy of Art and Design. Held at BWA Gallery in Wrocław, Poland, in February 2020, the second iteration of Invisible includes New Zealand artists Kerry Ann-Lee, Simon Eastwood and Lisa Munnelly, Lee Jensen, Angela Kilford, and Jason O’Hara.

Writing

Moana, Unimagined

By Millie Riddell

08.01.2020

The 16th Istanbul Biennial, titled The Seventh Continent, had a thematic focus on the large garbage patch currently occupying 3.4 million square kilometres of ocean, near Hawaii and Japan. Despite focusing on this area, Pacific artists were not present at the Biennial. Writer Millie Riddell explores the omission of Pacific artists, and what it means to not address or include the people most affected by environmental pollution and climate change.

Writing

An abundance of loss

By Zara Stanhope

12.05.2019

As part of HUM’s coverage of La Biennale di Venezia, we’ve invited Zara Stanhope, Lead Curator of the New Zealand Pavilion, to analyse Dane Mitchell’s work Post hoc and its lists of bygone things, as well as the artist's other major works exhibited at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Auckland Art Gallery and Raebervonstenglin, Zurich.

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

999, Alchemist Trauma Centre / Power Centre

By Jorge De Hoyos

11.07.2018

Berlin-based Jorge de Hoyos first experienced Alexa Wilson's current project 999: Alchemist Trauma Centre / Power Centre when both artists were auditioning for a Masters in Solo Dance Authorship in Berlin. In this part-essay, part-interview, they discuss the work, which is due to be performed in London, Berlin, India and NZ later this year, and exchange their views on feminism and challenging binary perceptions. 

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.