Installation
Writing
The Way Through Doors
By Andrew Berardini
22.06.2022
Andrew Berardini visits Fiona Connor’s solo exhibition at Château Shatto in LA, where the artist’s carefully rendered replicas of the doors of closed down clubs conjure up memories of forgotten youth.
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
On Civicness and Participating in Public Life through Art Practice - Panel discussion transcript
By Cat Auburn, Daniel Malone, Pauline Autet, Ruth Buchanan
14.12.2021
For Contemporary HUM’s third panel in October 2021, On Civicness, we sat down with Cat Auburn, Ruth Buchanan, and Daniel Malone in Berlin to talk about their practices, recent projects and what “civicness” means to them as Aotearoa artists working abroad—spanning Polish experimental theatre, the memory functions of NFTs and the power relations of collecting institutions. Read the full transcript of the panel discussion here!
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
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
A protest and a mourning ritual
By Michelangelo Corsaro
11.05.2021
In their work for the 13th Gwangju Biennale, the Bad Fiji Gyals call attention to the legacy of Girmitiya women, indentured labourers from the Indian subcontinent recruited by British colonial authorities to work on Fiji’s sugarcane plantations. Associate Curator Michelangelo Corsaro writes about the collaborative work of Aotearoa-based artist Quishile Charan and US-based artist Esha Pillay.
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
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
Always in Transit
By Aaron Lister
18.09.2019
A conversation with Yona Lee about her new site-specific installation, In Transit (Highway) (2019), presented at the 15th Lyon Biennale, her training as a cellist, and the development of this ongoing project. With an introduction from Daria de Beauvais, Senior Curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and Co-Curator of this year's Biennale.
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
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
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
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
An interview with Bruce Barber
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 Bruce Barber about his work Party without Party (2017), included in the exhibition Personal Structures: Open Borders at the Palazzo Bembo.
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
Urges of Imperialism Unravelled
By Rhana Devenport
01.05.2017
Rhana Devenport, Curator of the New Zealand Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, sets the context for Emissaries, Lisa Reihana's exhibition representing Aotearoa New Zealand at the 57th Biennale di Venezia.
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
This Model World, Travels to the Edge of Contemporary Art
By Will Gresson
08.12.2016
Will Gresson reviews the book This Model World, Travels to the Edge of Contemporary Art, by Anthony Byrt, published in 2016.
Writing
On Civicness and Participating in Public Life Through Art Practice - Artist Statements
14.12.2021
For Contemporary HUM’s third panel in October 2021, On Civicness, we invited Cat Auburn, Ruth Buchanan, and Daniel Malone in Berlin to talk about their practices, recent projects and what “civicness” means to them as Aotearoa artists working abroad. In Part One, the artists introduce their recent practice and consider their relationship to civicness, community and the public sphere through a chosen project.
Writing
Charting the Constellations of the Oceans, Rivers, and Islands
By Julie Nagam
09.07.2021
As the inaugural Artistic Director for Nuit Blanche Toronto (2020 and 2022), Dr Julie Nagam is interested in forging new relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, in Turtle Island (North America) and internationally, and in the use of digital and new media to express shared experiences of colonialism. Here, Nagam introduces several recent projects undertaken in collaboration with artists and curators from Aotearoa and the new global partnership The Space Between Us, emerging from these cross-cultural exchanges.
Calendar
Fiona Connor at Henry Art Gallery
23 November 2019 —
26 April 2020
Henry Art Gallery, Washington, U.S.A.
Calendar
Simon Denny: Security Through Obscurity
14 January —
22 February 2020
Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco, U.S.A.
Calendar
Simon Denny at de Young Museum
22 February —
25 October 2020
de Young Museum, San Francisco, U.S.A.
Calendar
Simon Denny: Mine
05 September 2020 —
17 January 2021
K21, Dusseldorf, Germany
Calendar
Michael Stevenson, a solo exhibition
20 September 2020 —
14 February 2021
Witte de Withstraat 50, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Calendar
Yona Lee at 15th Biennale de Lyon
18 September 2019 —
05 January 2020
Fagor Factory, Lyon, France
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
Looking for Home
By Jungah Lee
13.01.2021
A look at Yona Lee's site-specific work En Route Home at the 2020 Busan Biennale, its references to migration, the concept of 'home', and our new and developing relationships towards stability and roots in the era of globalisation.
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.