Politics
Calendar
Simon Denny, Sea and Fog
07 November 2024 —
25 January 2025
Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany
Calendar
David Rickard, Ars Electronica 2024
04 September —
08 September 2024
POSTCITY, Linz, Germany
Writing
On truth and telling stories
By Hana Pera Aoake
04.10.2024
Aotearoa artist Hana Pera Aoake reflects on their visit to the Venice Biennale and the questions posed by its central exhibition, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere. Unearthing the fraught political contexts of Venice, Aoake asks who is really made strange by the Biennale; and whether the presenting Aotearoa artists are able to retain the specificities of place within a curatorial frame that groups categories of difference under the theme of the “stranger”.
Calendar
Ruth Buchanan, How Not to Be Seen
10 May —
08 September 2024
Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada
Calendar
Matthew Galloway, Empty Vessels
01 September —
30 September 2024
Piccadilly Lights, London, UK
Calendar
et al.: epochal
05 October —
07 December 2024
Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Naarm Melbourne, Australia
Calendar
Lisa Walker, Madrugada – A Joalharia e a Política da Esperança
27 June —
22 September 2024
Palácio da Calheta, Lisbon, Portugal
Calendar
Yuki Kihara, transfeminisms Chapter III: Fragile Archives
05 July —
17 August 2024
Mimosa House, London, UK
Writing
HUM live from the 2024 Venice Biennale
16.04.2024
From 16–21 April 2024, Contemporary HUM will publish live coverage, exclusive images and videos from the opening week of Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, The 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Click through for coverage of the Aotearoa New Zealand artists presenting work in the curated section of the Biennale, as well as in other events held off-site.
Calendar
Alexa Wilson in Spring Season performance series
8.00PM — 10.00PM
17 May 2024
Grace Exhibition Space, NYC, USA
Calendar
Michael Stevenson, Mind's Eye
26 April —
26 May 2024
Fine Arts, Sydney, Gadigal Lands Sydney, Australia
Calendar
Ella Sutherland, Image, Interrupted
13 February —
12 April 2024
UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia
Calendar
Amanda Newall, The Bremen Intersection
14 February —
18 February 2024
Künstlerhaus Bremen and MS Dauerwelle, Bremen, Germany
Writing
What is held between bodies
By Clémentine Dubost
31.10.2023
After two years of development with his immediate family and numerous international residencies, Amit Noy premiered A Big Big Room Full of Everybody’s Hope in Paris this September, onstage alongside his mother, father, sister and grandmother. Clémentine Dubost spoke with Noy to explore the complexities of this work and his wider practice.
Calendar
Amit Noy and family, A Big Big Room Full of Everyone's Hope
07 September —
01 October 2023
Théâtre de la Ville—Les Abbesses in Paris and National Ballet of Marseille, France
Calendar
Paul Timings, Fake History
15 April —
01 May 2023
Lei Gallery, Taichung, Taiwan
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.