From Our Time Spent Underwater

// Opening Thursday 6 October, 6pm
// Friday 7 – Saturday 22 October 2016

There’s a moment in the movement where the stars just fall out from the sky. In a short moment of an arm being up and then down. In a easy movement of the leg lifting or the wing lifted. When they just fall on the floor, going to go get up river to burn in new formations.

There is A Eagle that screams into your face. It is frozen sideways. You’ve seen the memes of a eagle face-on and they look really strange. Is that a kind of metaphor for the Nation? But then the train moves and the thought stays on the platform.Read More

Jamie Berry | Leala Faleseuga | Brooke Fiafia | Valasi L.S | Sarah Stuart | Curated by Catherine Hunt

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breakme/harder
Gabrielle Amodeo | Rosario Aninat | Audrey Baldwin | Jordana Bragg | Ruby Joy Eade | Sofía Rocha-Casenave | Curated by Noelia Portela

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// Opening Wednesday 3 August 6 – 8pm
// Thursday 4 – Saturday 20 August 2016

Yours to tell is a group exhibition engaging the art of storytelling through sculpture, video, photography and installation. Artists, curators, designers, thinkers and makers were asked to communicate one story, any story, with the sole purpose of embracing their own authority to share. Yours to tell considers the contexts in which certain intimacies are divulged and the entwining vulnerabilities that both storyteller and audience are subject to. Grounded in feminine energy, each work exudes the innate resilience of its maker; exploring the micro junctures of a lived experience to challenge how and where we as the collective audience allow these to become (or exclude from becoming) part of our storied past.

Within the exhibition is a group project breakme/harder curated by Noelia Portela, and an installation in the archive room by Sarah Stuart takes cue from the exhibition to reframe the function of the space.

I’m not the one speaking – An exhibition catalogue w/ poster insert will accompany the show with words by Caroline Anderson, Taria Baquie, Brooke Fiafia, Catherine Hunt, Noelia Portela and Faith Wilson.

‘Untitled’ VAR Program Analysis (Disconnected Correspondence)

This project is made up of three parts, starting in Wellington on the 13th of April 2016, moving to San Francisco on the 1st of May – 30th of June (Varda artists residency program). The third part of the project will continue during my RM Gallery research residency from the 14th – 30th of July, where I aim to hold two public programs, develop a publication of this research, and a proposal for an exhibition of outcomes.

Parts:

1.  The initial interaction exploration utilised an inclusive silent correspondence exercise where participants contributed physical evidence of their interaction onto provided material with provided material. (This was initially intended to describe the connection individuals have regardless of who they are or where they are.)
2.  The secondary exploration was intended to explore this initial idea further. I employed phenomenological research where the relation of ‘home and global social issues’ were pulled apart and questioned in a context relating to the disconnect between peoples. (The material provided in part 1. was introduced to the people who I worked with in San Francisco, and participants also contributed physical evidence of their interaction with it.)
3. The final part of this project is to determine my understanding of correspondence between individuals who have a describable disconnect between each other. A disconnect, but dealing with similar issues of self in relation to the outside world, where the description of ‘home’ is descriptive of self, and ‘global social issues’ are descriptive of the outside, what others deal with. (The material provided in part 1. and part 2. to participants in Wellington and San Francisco will be introduced to participants at the first event held at RM Gallery on the 25th of July, participants will be invited to contribute physical evidence of their interaction onto the provided material, with provided mediums. In the second event , on the 27th of July. participants will take part in a ritual which was also undertaken in San Francisco.)

During this research residency period at RM I will be analysing my experience of the phenomenological research undertaken in San Francisco during my time at the Varda Artists Residency Program, 1st of May – 30th of June 2016.

Public Program:

Disconnected Correspondence AKLD #1.
// Mon 25 July, 6pm start. Silent ritual will continue for 120 minutes.

Participants will be asked to sign release forms allowing their likeness to be documented.

Participants will take part in a silent ritual where participants will be directed to silently contribute marks on the provided material (The same material provided to participants in part 1 and part 2.) with provided mediums, leaving physical evidence of their interaction with it. (The space needed on the gallery floor will be enough for the two works, approximately 4 x 3 m, with enough room for participants to move amongst each other.)

Disconnected Correspondence AKLD #2.

// Wed 27 July, 6pm start. Silent ritual will continue for 40 minutes.

Participants will be asked to sign release forms allowing their likeness to be documented.

Participants will take part in a silent ritual where participants will be directed to sit in three different groups in the gallery space, they will be participants in an exercise that was also undertaken while in San Francisco.

(It is recommended that the audience/participants come to both events.)

For more information on this project and an insight into my experience during part 2 of this project, you can look at my personal notes via my website.

A special thank you to Pyramid Club – P-Lab Talks (Wellington), VAR Program and France Dubois (San Francisco), RM (Auckland)

a bone, a flesh, a daddy’s nest 

With texts by Jennifer Kate Shields & Joanna Neumegen
And curatorial assistance from Bridget Riggir

// Opening Wednesday 13 July, 6pm
// Thursday 14 – Saturday 30 July 2016

Was I Human? The Human is a normative category that indexes access to power… somebody that is implicitly assumed to be masculine, white, urbanized, speaking a standard language, heterosexually inscribed in a reproductive unit, and a full tax paying citizen of a recognized polity… So Posthuman, very welcome! What a chance for those who were not Human to begin with … Of course, it is not that simple. Because those who were not Human to begin with … do not make it to the great control room of the great Posthuman mutation.

— Rosi Braidotti
By asking us to remember that we were not all Human to begin with, Rosi Braidotti reminds us that post/non/in/trans/-human endeavors seek labours that preexist—labours that have long belonged to subjects of the margins.

A current medley of Post-anthro discourses promise futures of difference, futures without class or gender, race, labour, or even mortality. But as scholarship and as industry—coming from the centre and those at it—such promises of “transcendence” are too easily given and too hard to believe.

What of those who were not Human to begin with? What of the labour of lived difference?  What happens to stories of exclusion, and to histories of violence, when the future on offer is one that already forgets?

Where do worlds, in which the Human was never the centre, go? And what of the bodies we have made defiantly, the birdsong we have understood, the kisses given by their lips when ours would not reach?

a bone, a flesh, a daddy’s nest reclaims such Posthuman notions from “a future of difference” into a lived labour, politics, and joy of now. While forms from distinct worlds, Perry’s and Songsataya’s imagings together show that embodied knowledge is the place of true difference and change. Like the misremembered quote making its title, this exhibition places agency in the body and intuition of the present.

A ‘reading table’ will present literature that has informed this exhibition and its collaborators. We invite you to come spend time reading in the gallery.