Politics
Calendar
Natalie Tozer at Sluice Lisbon: Territory
10 November —
13 November 2022
various locations throughout Barreiro, Lisbon, Portugal
Writing
documenta fifteen or lumbung one?
By Bruce E. Phillips
12.08.2022
For documenta fifteen, the arts collective FAFSWAG were invited to participate as members of the lumbung process established by this year’s curatorial collective ruangrupa. In the absence of the trophy artist phenomenon so entrenched within mega-exhibitions, Bruce E. Phillips responds to the work of different participating collectives exhibiting in Kassel and discusses how introducing a non-European exhibition-making concept into the heart of arguably Europe’s most revered art event was bound to confound those unwilling to consider a differing perspective.
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
Talk, Protest, Revolt
By Frances Loeffler
06.08.2021
In the 2021 documentary Revolt She Said, filmmaker Louise Lever traces the histories and critical concerns of feminist movements in Aotearoa. Frances Loeffler reflects on the complex questions raised by the film and the impact of recent feminist movements in the art world.
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
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
“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
Learning from Athens (There and Elsewhere)
By Laura Preston, Wystan Curnow
18.12.2017
This is the second part of a correspondence between Laura Preston and Wystan Curnow, in which the two writers' share memories and snapshots of journeys through the art world from 1987 to 2007 and 2017.
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
Luke Willis Thompson: A Sister Image
By Frances Loeffler
15.07.2017
Frances Loeffler writes on London-based New Zealand artist Luke Willis Thompson's residency at the Chisenhale Gallery in London, culminating in autoportrait (2017), a video portrait of Diamond Reynolds reflecting Thompson's ongoing enquiry into questions of race, class and social inequality.
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
Playing with Gender at the Tropenmuseum
By Millie Riddell
08.10.2020
What a Genderful World, the current exhibition at Amsterdam's Tropenmuseum, focuses on gender in the modern world and features Aotearoa artist Yuki Kihara; the next representative for New Zealand at the Venice Biennale. Writer Millie Riddell explores how the works presented function within the anthropological lens used in this exhibition and the balance between the genuine discussions of gender and the corporate and colonial undertones of the presentation.
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
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
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
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.
Writing
Learning from Athens (There and Elsewhere)
By Laura Preston, Wystan Curnow
18.12.2017
For over a year, Laura Preston was based in Athens to work as associate editor of documenta 14 publications, including South as a State of Mind released in four issues. HUM invited the art writer and editor to reflect on this experience, who in turn, extended the invitation to fellow New Zealander and distinguished art critic, curator and poet Wystan Curnow. What results is a two-part correspondence in which the pair reflect on their imagined and lived experiences of Europe coming from their other south.
Writing
An interview with Paul Handley
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 to Paul Handley about his practice and his work Déplacement (Smuggling Pod) (2017), included in the exhibition Personal Structures: Open Borders at the Palazzo Bambo.
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.
Calendar
Simon Denny at the Belgrade Biennale
25 June —
22 August 2021
The Dreamers, Belgrade, Serbia
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.