Installation
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.
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
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
Resistance through Koloa
By Ysabelle Cheung
06.04.2020
The second publication from our special series focusing on the Asia region, looks to Hong Kong gallery Para Site, and its exhibition Koloa: Women, Art, and Technology. The exhibition centres on koloa, or customary women’s arts in Tonga, and features three artists from New Zealand: Tanya Edwards, Nikau Hindin, and Vaimaila Urale.
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
A Question of Identity
By Grace Lai
08.11.2019
New Zealand jeweller Johanna Zellmer's practice focuses on national identity and the varying bureaucracy that can divide us. In this essay, Curator Grace Lai looks specifically at Zellmer's recent three-month residency in Gothenburg, Sweden, and her exhibition of crafted and altered coins which acted as a vehicle to comment on the current political climate.
Writing
The Factory and its Memories
By Kari Schmidt
16.10.2019
A look at artist Matthew Galloway's residency at Cripta 747 in Turin, Italy, and the resulting exhibition The Factory and its Memories, which concentrates on the now defunct Nebiolo factory building, whose history is engrained in Italian graphic design and typography, reflecting Galloway’s own background as a graphic designer.
Writing
On Emptiness
By Rosa Gubay
02.10.2019
Oliver Perkins and Patrick Lundberg’s recent show On Emptiness at FOLD Gallery in London presented a conversation between the two artists' work, focusing on their object-centric painting practice. Writer Rosa Gubay analyses their use of negative space and the varying forms it can take.
Writing
Something Different
By Laura Preston
05.09.2019
A look at a series of exhibitions by women artists held at Secession in Vienna, including by New Zealand artist Fiona Connor, who has been based in Los Angeles since 2011. Connor's show, #8, Closed for Installation, Sequence of Events, presented cast bronze pieces alongside architectural interruptions, and was shown in conjunction with German artist Nora Schultz and Palestinian-English artist Rosalind Nashashibi.
Writing
Sriwhana Spong’s Ida-Ida
By Leah Reynolds
09.08.2019
London-based artist Sriwhana Spong has been exhibiting widely throughout the UK in 2019. In this essay, writer Leah Reynolds reviews Spong’s recent exhibition Ida-Ida at Spike Island in Bristol, considering the key, interrelating ideas of her work, and Spong’s use of a variety of mediums.
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
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
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.
Writing
An interview with Dame Jenny Gibbs
By Pauline Autet
05.04.2019
As the commissioner of the New Zealand Pavilion in the years 2001, 2003 and 2019, Dame Jenny Gibbs has unparalleled knowledge on the history of New Zealand at the Venice Biennale. HUM's Editor Pauline Autet, speaks with Gibbs about the forthcoming biennale and about Dane Mitchell's project for the prestigious international exhibition.
Writing
Test Run
By Jennifer Thatcher
13.12.2018
We hear from three artists who, over the last three years, have completed, or are completing, a three-month residency at London art centre Gasworks. Sriwhana Spong in 2016, Katrina Beekhuis in 2017, and Hikalu Clarke, who is half-way through his, all share their experiences and thoughts on this important opportunity.
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.
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
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
Judy Millar: The Sinew of Space
By Jodie Dalgleish
12.02.2018
Jodie Dalgleish considers Judy Millar's exhibition Swallowed in Space at Galerie Mark Müller in Zurich (2017), reflecting on the way Millar's affective paintings can activate space to create a 'bodily-felt' experience and extensively draws on a dialogue between the writer and the artist evaluating 'what painting does to us'.
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 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
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.