Photography
Project
Kunst Kopfüber / Art Upside Down
Partnership
The Goethe-Institut New Zealand and Contemporary HUM present a series of portraits about New Zealand artists who have found a new physical - and artistic - home in Germany. Kunst Kopfüber / Art Upside Down invites six international writers and curators to look at the practice of six contemporary artists from Aotearoa working across a variety of mediums, from video art to painting; large-scale installation to poetry. The written portraits about contemporary painter Sam Rountree Williams and poet Hinemoana Baker kick off this collaborative series.
Writing
Directions in Art Publishing during Covid-19
By Freya Copeland
10.09.2021
Reflecting on the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic in the world of independent book publishing, artist, curator and co-founder of Berlin-based Replika Publishing, Freya Copeland writes on the history of artists’ books and the role of independent publishing. She considers the lessons the industry can learn after a year and a half without art book fairs—usually an essential opportunity for publishers to meet collaborators, distributors and other publishers, and how the world of art book publishing might evolve going forward.
Writing
On Louise Stevenson's 'Someplace Else'
By Chris Holdaway
24.08.2021
In Someplace Else, Louise Stevenson chronicles her complex and unfolding relationship with Hungary, travelling back and forth from Aotearoa since her first visit in 1991. In this elaborate, handbound mixed media book, Stevenson traces decades of travel with careful preservation of ephemera, annotating ticket stubs and found photographs with her own drawings and writing. In this piece, poet and bookmaker Chris Holdaway considers the memories that inhere in overlooked items, repurposed carefully by Stevenson as talismans of place and the passage of time.
Calendar
Anne Noble, Point of No Return. Attunement of Attention
24 April —
20 June 2021
NART – Narva Art Residency, Estonia
Calendar
Ans Westra: Urban Drift
05 December 2019 —
22 February 2020
Anastasia Photo, New York, U.S.A.
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
Amidst and Beyond
By Alice Connew, Virginia Woods-Jack
10.03.2021
To celebrate the February 2021 release of Dwelling in the Margins: Art Publishing in Aotearoa, a new publication by GLORIA Books, HUM is pleased to republish this extract in which two photographers speak about their artistic and publishing practices, and about their work highlighting women in photography through collaborative projects and platforms that foster debate, visibility and community.
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
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
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
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
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
Raw Matériel
By Emil McAvoy
10.06.2019
Within the greater context of the recent massacre in Christchurch, San Fransisco-based New Zealand photographer Jono Rotman discusses his new work Matériel which depicts a series of privately owned guns in the US, and his recent publication Mongrelism, which features the New Zealand-based gang, the Mighty Mongrel Mob.
Writing
Samoan Queer Lives (2018)
By Pauline de Souza
04.03.2019
Eleven years in the making, this is the first publication of its kind; a collection of 14 short stories from fa'afafine, or transgender and queer Samoans, focusing on their individual experiences in historic and modern times. Edited by artists Dan Taulapapa McMullin and Yuki Kihara, and published by Little Island Press in October 2018.
Writing
Mana Moana in the UK’s year of Captain Cook
By Ahilapalapa Rands, Jo Walsh
21.09.2018
London-based cultural producer Jo Walsh and artist Ahilapalapa Rands discuss some of the exhibitions and programmes taking place in the UK to mark the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook's departure to the Pacific, which also resonates to many as the start of colonisation in Moana-Nui-A-Kiwa. In this conversation piece, Rands and Walsh focus in on the projects they have been involved in, working with The British Library, Whitby Library and other UK institutions, and their efforts to disrupt the major narratives surrounding Cook.
Writing
Conversations from Jan van Eyck Academy
By Murdoch Stephens, Paoletta Holst, Raewyn Martyn
02.04.2017
A conversation between Aotearoa New Zealand artist Raewyn Martyn, Dutch artist Paoletta Holst, and writer and publisher Murdoch Stephens, during their residencies at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, Netherlands, reflecting on the relationship between art, activism and how these processes and practices relate to very real, life-and-death, refugee and immigration policies.
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.