In the Gallery
7-31st July 2021
Kate van der Drift, Teresa Peters, Shelley Simpson, Kathryn Tulloch
From things flow
Shelley Simpson, RUST, Fe2O3·nH2O, FeO(OH), Fe(OH)3 digital SEM image, 2021
From things flow is a collection of works, unravellings, experiences and events that query the concept of agency both within and without our bodies.
Kate van der Drift, Teresa Peters, Shelley Simpson and Kathryn Tulloch are artists working with materiality, processes and temporality. Using an expanded notion of the gallery space which reflects the RM kaupapa of ‘the potentials of an empty room – a space to gather, to think, to talk, to make, to share…’, the work itself will be created in or evolve within the gallery. In this lively, activated space-come-lab, the artists will bring in elements of transition, evolution and participation both within the material concerns informing their practices, and with people in the space participating in formal and informal happenings.
Kate van der Drift’s time based and cameraless works are created by submerging film (sheet and super 8) in lightproof holders to the waters and sediment of the Piako River. A durational accretion created by the action of water and reaction with the sensitive filmic substrate. Forming and unforming lumen prints will be exposed to light and continue to develop over the course of the show.
Teresa’s rhizomic installations and pseudo archives are made up of small curious earth-born entities in clay and ceramic. She explores ceramics as an alchemical matrix, extending naturally to geomorphic evolution and rupture as the mother of revolution. From corals to volcanoes to the quartz in your mobile phone. Her earth bodies and digital archive will evolve during the show – breaking ground and exploring entropic transformations.
Shelley’s exploration of iron continues her investigation of the alive-ness of metal and the ways in which materials are dense with stories. By co-opting the industrial process of electroforming and of scientific imaging, she asks how we can shift our anthropocentric position to one that considers the liveliness of others.
Kathryn uses processes and materials involved in painting and cooking as a means to re-connect to ecological layers between our experience of earthly material presence and human production. Remnants and ephemera from the opening events activity will be present for the duration of the show.
Coming up
Opening event: Wednesday August 4th from 6pm
Space R
Grace Crothall
Heat Pits
Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.
Journeying staircase into chocolate river:
The word Journey sounds too metaphysical?
…Step-cement your earthly magic.
Does it need tarseal beneath its waters?
How else can belly travel?
Mallow snaps concrete..
The plated piping will aid in your digestion…
A very knowing muscle…
If you stand inside the milk-powdered pool, you’ll find it resting knee-deep
(with ample resources to climb back out).
How much do you believe in the chocolate’s message?
When it bubbles in tongues it glitches in orange..
But I’ve come to accept that for who it is.
Chocolate patina rightly divided.
A gluey forthcoming rolls over its fibs.
Who can remove his outer coat?
Grace Crothall (b. 1993) is an installation based artist living in Ōtautahi.
For Heat Pits she has worked alongside Priscilla Rose Howe (design)
and Mitchell Bright (photographer).
With special thanks to Cameron Gray.
Space M
Antje Barke
Seven Islands
Seven Islands is a solo showing of new work by Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist Antje Tamae Barke. As a meditation of narrative projected onto periphery spaces, these works explore the interpretation of two locations; a road trip in Quebec in 2017 and wanderings in Tāmaki Makaurau.
Archive Room
Shivanjani Lal, Amol K Patil and Niccolò Moscatelli
Looking North, Looking West, Looking South, Looking East
Looking North, Looking West, Looking South, Looking East is a project which explores time, distance and friendship in this era of uncertainty. Three collaborators, three friends: artists Shivanjani Lal, Amol K Patil and Niccolò Moscatelli based in the UK, India and France respectively are exploring how to connect across distance and time through friendship.
Instead of an exhibition, a triangulation, an offering, a gesture, a moment across time.
The artists want to know, can a gesture make a connection?
Can bodies and voices link three points that are normally so distant on the map?
Since 2020 they have collaborated as a way to share solidarities, empathies and reflect on isolation in quarantine.
In 2021, for RM Gallery, this connection written in clouds and code takes on a physical form in an artwork that has travelled through continents and oceans to land in Tamaki Makaurau as a proof of the possibility to cross physical and political frontiers.
Shivanjani Lal is an Indo Fijian Australian artist based in London, England.
Amol K Patil is an Indian artist based in Bombay, India.
Niccolò Moscatelli is an Italian artist based in Marseille, France.
They have been friends since 2017 when they met in Bombay, India.