Public Space
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.
Writing
Rocks on Wheels and Flying Shoes
By Rosemary Forde
28.03.2023
Curator Rosemary Forde explores the art-historical and civic context in which artist Mike Hewson’s recent public playground in Naarm Melbourne, Rocks on Wheels, has landed.
Calendar
Ruth Buchanan, A Garden with Bridges (spine, stomach, throat, ear)
07 May 2023 —
07 May 2028
jobcenter Mönchengladbach, Germany
Calendar
Maddie Leach, The fountain: An art-technological-social drama
01 January 2021 —
01 January 2025
Lund Technical University, Lund, Sweden
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
Chance and Impermanence
By Daria de Beauvais, Kate Newby
27.07.2022
Texas-based Aotearoa artist Kate Newby talks to Palais de Tokyo curator Daria de Beauvais about Reclaim the Earth, traversing the ecological questions at the heart of the exhibition, Newby's collaborative process of art making, and her new works commissioned for the exhibition.
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
Forever Fresh
By Jessica Palalagi
06.11.2020
Jessica Palalagi, co-founder of the In*ter*is*land Collective, describes how their physical base in London, MOKU Pacific HQ, London, has served as a place for tagata Moana in the UK to create and meet since its inception in 2018, and reflects on the highs and lows of the past three years, including their exhibition in late 2019, Mana Moana, Mana Wahine.
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
The Discreet Charm of Chance
By Jari Niesner
23.08.2019
In her recent exhibition Following the Rubber Trails, at Frappant Galerie in Hamburg, Germany, Xin Cheng addresses the politics, history and philosophy of rubber, in its varying forms. Writer Jari Nieser explores the artist's performance, film and installation.
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
Maddie Leach: The Grief Prophesy
By Hjalmar Falk
08.06.2018
Maddie Leach's project The Grief Prophesy, created for the Gothenburg International Biennale for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) 2017, addresses the disturbing and intriguing circumstances surrounding an alleged Satanic murder, committed by members of a well-known Swedish black metal band. Swedish historian Hjalmar Falk discusses the work.
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.
Project
On Civicness and participating in public life through art practice
Panel discussion in Berlin
On 2 October 2021, Contemporary HUM continues its series of panel discussions, this time focusing on Aotearoa’s large artist contingent in Berlin, and throughout Europe.
This conversation explored the idea of ‘civicness’ and how it is tied to social responsibility within a global community, taken from the perspective of three artists from Aotearoa who are actively taking part in public life through their practice. What does collective work or cooperation with others allow in contrast to an individual practice, and is authorship important in a collaborative project? What does a site-specific response look like when working in situ within vastly different contexts, from art institutions and public theatres to the NFT market? Is there a relation to be traced between civicness and social change and what tools can be used when attempting to rethink power relations?
Guest speakers include Glasgow-based Cat Auburn; Berlin-based Ruth Buchanan; and Warsaw-based Daniel Malone. HUM’s Editor Pauline Autet moderated the discussion.
Calendar
Melanie Tangaere Baldwin, Billboard Work
01 September —
30 September 2021
Dalston, East London, United Kingdom
Calendar
Anna Korver at the Tuwaiq International Sculpture Symposium
10 November —
02 December 2021
Riyadh Art, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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
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
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
Spin Slowly, Fighting Gravity
By Samuel Walsh
04.02.2019
Arts facilitator and producer Samuel Walsh reflects on his residency at Zaratan - Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon, Portugal, where he was able to develop ideas for his own artist-run space, Strange Haven, in Tāmaki Makaurau. Although thousands of miles apart, Walsh and the facilitators of Zaratan discovered their shared joys and struggles of running an art space, and the importance of community in their practice.
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
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
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
Reporting from the Front Desk
By Chris Winwood
08.12.2016
Paris-based architect Chris Winwood considers Future Islands, the New Zealand contribution to the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016.
Calendar
Paul Handley, Redesigning Sovereignty
23 September —
17 October 2021
Le K.A.B, Square des Batignolles, Paris, France
