Nature
Writing
Collective
By Emily Jan
20.11.2023
Upon visiting Treaty 8 territory for the exhibition Collective, by collaborative duo Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux, Alberta, Canada-based artist and writer Emily Jan considers how these photographic works function as a body which, like the trees they depict, carries stories; of human desires, needs, and actions of destruction or care.
Writing
The Polyphonic Sea
By Emma O'Neill
10.10.2023
Presented at Bundanon Art Museum, deep in the territory of the Dharawal and Dhurga language groups, The Polyphonic Sea features new commissions and recontextualised work by Antonia Barnett McIntosh, Andrew Beck, Ruth Buchanan, The Estate of L. Budd, Sione Faletau, Samuel Holloway and et al., Sarah Hudson, Sonya Lacey, Nova Paul, Sriwhana Spong and Shannon Te Ao.
Calendar
Amrita Hepi, Planetary Gestures
26 September —
03 November 2023
Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre, Dandenong, Australia
Calendar
Grace Mirams, I'm at the river, I'll meet you by the sea
06 August —
20 August 2023
Gallery Crossing, Gifu, Japan
Calendar
Lisa Reihana, Forest of being Time
01 July —
24 September 2023
Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
Writing
Off Season by Richard Frater
By Henry Babbage
29.05.2023
Off Season by Richard Frater at the Kunstverein München sparked reflections, for writer Henry Babbage, on our asymmetrical relations with the avian life that shares our cities.
Calendar
Ann Shelton, The First Ten Years
06 July —
18 August 2023
Denny Dimin Gallery, New York, USA
Calendar
Steve Carr, In Bloom (IndigiGrow)
05 July —
02 October 2023
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, Australia
Calendar
Seung Yul Oh, Guttation
23 June —
23 July 2023
ONE AND J. Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
Calendar
Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux, Murmures de la nature: une ode à la forêt
22 June —
24 September 2023
Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen Art Gallery, Moncton, Canada
Calendar
Lemi Ponifasio, Amor a la muerte (Love to Death)
07 July —
08 July 2023
Joliette Theater, Marseille, France
Calendar
Sam Rountree Williams, Nature
29 March —
22 April 2023
Charim Schleifmühlgasse, Vienna, Austria
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
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
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
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
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
Screaming Strawbears and other Strange Engagements
By Tessa Laird
05.07.2019
From Morris dancing to costume making, Berlin-based artist Matthew Cowan and arts writer Tessa Laird discuss Cowan's interest in folklore, the function of tradition in the modern world and the influence of surrealism on his practice. Cowan's exhibition The Scream of the Strawbear opens at Kunsthalle Giessen in Germany on 7 September 2019.
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.
Calendar
Anne Noble, Point of No Return. Attunement of Attention
24 April —
20 June 2021
NART – Narva Art Residency, Estonia
Calendar
Yota Ayaan, Plant Data
06 June —
27 June 2021
Galeria da Biodiversidade, Porto, Portugal
Calendar
Len Lye in Anticorps
23 October 2020 —
03 January 2021
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 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
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
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.