Past Exhibitions - 2021
68 Voces 68 Corazones
68 Voices
5.30 -7.30 pm Tuesday 31st August 2021
Mexico, like Aotearoa New Zealand, has an history of colonisation, and where here there is one recognised indigenous language, there are many more there. 68 Voces 68 Corazones (68 Voices) is a series of indigenous stories told in their original languages. Presented in conjunction with the Embassy of Mexico this exhibition offers a small window into the similarities and differences between our two places, places that share at least a becoming post-coloniality. “Nadie puede amar lo que no conoce”, no one can love what they do not know.
68 Voices is a project created by Gabriela Badillo / COMBO in 2013 with a Co-investment Grant from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) and ongoing support from CANAL ONCE, INALI, CDI that has allowed the project grow, to foster pride in and respect for the use of indigenous Mexican languages and a sense of pride in all the communities and cultures that are part of the cultural wealth of Mexico.
For more information: https://68voces.mx/projects
Flat Earthers
13-30 July 2021
Carris Adams, Antistatic, Kathy Barry, Cassandra Barnett, Ben Buchanan, Heather Christle, Gabrielle Civil, Rachel Leah Cohn, Bek Coogan, Margaret Elliot, John Lake, Ivan Martinez, Rachel O’Neill, Charlotte Parallel, Prison Religion, Lisi Raskin, Radna Rumping, Hannah Salmon, Matt Shelton and Nikolai Noel, Julian Smith, Vlad Smolkin, Murdoch Stephens, Mr Sterile Assembly, and Zhou Junsheng.
Flat Earthers brings together artworks from artists and writers around the globe, responding to Aotearoa New Zealand artist John Lake’s documentation of the 2019 Flat Earth Conference—an international gathering of people who believe the Earth is flat.
John’s To the Ends of the (Flat) Earth works have previously been presented within the flatearthers.space website and e-publication, built during the lead up to the 2020 election campaigns in Aotearoa and the USA. Between July and September 2020, John’s photographs and ‘research’ into misinformation in the ‘information age’ became a provocation for artists and writers to respond with new work using poetics and polemics to navigate landscapes of fear and possibilities of fearlessness.
Public programmes: 27 July, 4:30pm: A conversation among artists and writers John Lake; Antistatic; and Dylan Horrocks, chaired by writer Pip Adam. 6pm: closing party and launch of the Flat Earthers limited edition print publication designed by Kerry Ann Lee, and a performance from artist Bek Coogan.
Flat Earthers website: www.flatearthers.space
Flat Earthers FB: @flatearthers.space
Te Whare Hera Instagram: @tewharehera
Developed with generous support from Creative New Zealand.
Time Travel & The Invisible Body
Ben Buchanan
26 May—9 June 2021
Time Travel & the Invisible Body is an edited selection of recent paintings. It extends Ben’s interest in ‘pattern-making’ and abstraction, involving elements of illustration in that explore the painting’s potential to hold mauri. He creates works in groups and describes them as ‘friends’ who generate kōrero amongst one another. They talk of the complexities of life in the Anthropocene and offer critique around individual and community responsibility in this reality.
Buchanan reimagines the radical birth of abstraction, or the disappearance of the body. He looks at the sequels of abstraction and imagines a space where the highs and lows of cultural production meet and /or diverge in circular time loops. What happens to the body when it moves through the imagined space of time travel? What happens to art histories when viewed through a contemporary lens.
These works playfully suspend a myriad of questions and possibilities. They swing between cynicism and sincerity; they have a casual quality while also being ambitious.
Winter Garden
Catherine Bagnall
L. Jane Sayle
21 April - 7 May 2021
This exhibition features work from their recently published book of poems and paintings, On We Go (Massey University Press).
‘A gorgeous, strange and bewitching little book of elliptical yet open poems and enchanting paintings…The poems are connected to the facing illustrations but also have their own strange lives to live. Imagine them not as glosses or explanations but as paths leading from Catherine’s forests – we follow them to go somewhere else.’ Damien Wilkins
‘ Enter a magical place that resembles a series of open windows and doors, thresholds that lead you to a world that is rendered ethereal, fable-inducing, childlike, dreamy, mysterious. The translucent layers in both the poetry and the images transport you to shadow and light, the familiar and the achingly strange.’ Paula Green
The Unseen
Gabby O’ Connor
10-26 March 2021
The Unseen 2 is a multi-authored, temporary sculptural project led by artist Gabby O’Connor that brings art and science into close conversation. Created from 12kms of rope and cable ties, this expansive, site-specific artwork evolved through a series of nationwide community programmes involving more than 60 workshops and 1600 participants.
Scientific research forms the premise for the workshops and art installation. O’Connor and the contributing participants use rope as a collaborative drawing and sculptural mapping material to create an artwork that reflects local marine science research into the global climate. In each workshop, O’Connor, scientists and community participants explore how eco systems work and how they may change.
FOUR WOMEN ARTISTS TACKLING THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND BODY ISSUES OF THE EVERYDAY – ON ABC AUSTRALIA
Gabby's practice is sculptural, site specific, often social, relational and deeply connected to site and community. Her current projects work collaboratively with communities, students, scientists and audience and use research into the geographic location of the exhibition as well as the architectural gallery space to inform the installation process. Previously, she has exhibited at: City Gallery Wellington, Pataka Museum+Art, Enjoy, Toi Poneke, National Library of NZ , Corban Estate Arts Centre, Physics Room, The Suter Art Gallery, The Otago Museum, Sharjah Art Museum UAE, and The North Wall UK.
In each instance, I work closely with the architecture, its limits and possibilities to transform site, materials and the spatial experience. Education strategies are often built into the projects as a way of involving communities and to build interest and an audience for the exhibition in the lead up to the launch.
Since 2011, her practice has evolved where she is regularly working on collaborative art-sci projects that connect climate change research/-ers with art audiences and communities. These projects have resulted in her participation in Antarctic oceanographic research in McMurdo Sound with scientists from Niwa, Auckland University and Otago in 2015 and 2016 that led to a series of exhibitions and publications with the project Studio Antarctica. These Antarctic trips saw her developing new ways to collect data in the field, documenting scientists in action for outreach, conducting artistic research and engaging audiences.
the stories of five to ten people
Group Exhibition
Curated by Bryce Galloway
5 - 26 February 2021
Comedy has a problematic relationship with the contexts set up for contemporary art. While a lot of artists use comedy, this aspect of the work is often bypassed by art writers and gallerists keen to promote art’s ‘serious’ concerns. And then there’s the environment of the art gallery itself; are we supposed to laugh, or is this a space for quiet contemplation only?
In response to the above conditions, Massey University lecturer and artist/curator Bryce Galloway has brought together 12 artists from Aotearoa whose work uses comedy.