iMpOrTanT iNfOrMaTiON

Courtesy of 5ever Books.

Courtesy of 5ever Books.

upcoming
20 Jul – 31 Aug

5ever Books, Achille Segard, Renae Williams, Sasha Francis

Postering is historically a politicised form of activism. The collected posters in iMpOrTanT iNfOrMaTiON by 5ever Books are presented as an expanded publication, bringing into question the idea of autonomy and authorship within the city.

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iMpOrTanT iNfOrMaTiON considers public discourse offline – walls of posters are displayed extracted from their native urban homes around central Pōneke. The exhibition offers insight into the current state of street activism, set against a background of dreary economic conditions, growing conservatism and an increase in the exploitation of the commons, internet and public space. Accompanying the exhibition, 5ever Books have produced a book-object articulating a wider cultural history of postering in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and will run a series of workshops around postering encouraging people to take their own voice, and their own city, into their own hands.

5ever Books, made up of Sasha Francis, Achille Segard and Renae Williams, is a collective of artists, designers, writers, editors, educators and their friends who are dedicated to giving a voice to community groups and individuals across a spectrum of cultural issues and campaigns for social justice. Since 2020, they have worked on a range of collaborations with writers, artists and activist organisations. 

The collective came together in response to rising inequality, ongoing processes of gentrification around Te Whanganui-a-Tara, growing techno-surveillance and the privitisation of language. In the wake of such loss of community and digital spaces where art, politics, action and ideas could flourish freely, 5ever books sought to develop infrastructure to empower self-expression and horizontal knowledge. Predominantly working as a press, 5ever Books have utilised print media and book production as a tool to intervene material reality through an open-ended and experimental approach to making, collaboration and distribution.

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

 

5ever Books is an underground publishing house based at Rebel Press, Trades Hall in Te Whanganui-a-Tara:

"We print, splice, bind and chop pesky dank little books. Our scope is nebulous. Form and sense of disciplinarity remains plural. But our target is clear: to publish punchy, intense and interdisciplinary work, woven together by a shared transformational kaupapa. We recognise the collective necessity of actively infiltrating and affecting our playground and home, Wellington. As we balance our vision with pragmatism, we are committed to realising a post-capitalist vision that honours Te Tiriti O Waitangi in Aotearoa. We are serious in our playfulness."

5ever Books was launched in 2015 as 5everdankley.florist by artist Max Trevor Thomas Edmond, with a focus on experimental texts and collaborative objects. The imprint name was passed on in 2020, and relaunched as 5ever Books. 

 

 

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Homing Instinct

Dieneke Jansen, This Housing Thing, 2021. Film still. Commissioned by The Physics Room.

Dieneke Jansen, This Housing Thing, 2021. Film still. Commissioned by The Physics Room.

upcoming
20 Jul – 31 Aug

Ananta Thitanat, Ari Angkasa, Dieneke Jansen, Kahurangiariki Smith

Homing Instinct is a collaborative international programme of artist commissions related to home, shelter, and belonging. Three new moving image works have been commissioned from Ari Angkasa (Australia), Kahurangiariki Smith (Aotearoa), and Ananta Thitanat (Thailand), showing alongside Dieneke Jansen (Aotearoa).

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Homing Instinct is a film project developed in partnership between CIRCUIT (Te Whanganui-a-Tara), Composite (Naarm), Storage Art Space (Bangkok), and The Physics Room (Ōtautahi), with each organisation taking responsibility for a new commission developed in their local context. The new works will be joined by Aotearoa based artist Dieneke Jansen’s This Housing Thing (2021), a work and practice which sparked this series of new commissions.

Homing Instinct is a response to living in a time that requires not only redress of housing inequalities, but more expansive conceptions of housing-shelter-belonging. As increasing numbers of people are displaced through social and environmental forces, the exchange of stories around housing and home is both politically and personally necessary. As a whole, the project intends to foreground empathetic, courageous works about what home and belonging means in our respective contexts, and to assert the role of embodied, spiritual and psychological experience within any discussion of housing.

The three new commissions were selected following an open call by a curatorial panel: Mary Pansanga, Sathit Sattarasart, Channon Goodwin, Mark Williams, and Abby Cunnane. The work will be shown in 2024  at The Physics Room in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, at Composite, Naarm Melbourne; Storage Art Space, Bangkok; and Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

 

Curated by Abby Cunnane, Channon Goodwin, Mark Williams, Mary Pansanga, Sathit Sattarasart

ABOUT THE ARTISTS


KAHURANGIARIKI SMITH
He uri nō ngā tūpuna i heke mai ai i runga i ngā waka o Te Arawa, o Tainui, o Mataatua, o Takitimu, o Horouta hoki, Kahurangiariki Smith is a Māori artist living in Aotearoa New Zealand. In recent years Kahurangiariki has been collaborating with her māmā, Dr Aroha Yates-Smith, a leading academic on the ancient Māori feminine. Kahurangiariki’s work explores her mother’s research and the many personifications of atua wāhine (Māori goddesses). She works to manifest these atua wāhine into a physical form, locating them in the present and in our futures. Sometimes playful, sometimes cheeky, Kahurangiariki’s work explores a range of media such as moving image, karaoke, 3D rendering, video games, neon and writing.


ARI ANGKASA
Ari Angkasa is an artist based in Naarm (Melbourne). Ari's work considers the liminal zones she inhabits in transitioning and in diaspora as time-less sites of release. Through her practice, Ari manipulates genre conventions of art, film, and theatre, to explore the notion of healing as existing solely on 'island time'. Ari's practice is a restorative process, a survival instinct in response to structural oppression. Ari's research work tracks the legacy of Western cultural neo-imperialism and aims to archive such impact through her artistic practice documented in a conscious framing of the body as cinematic medium. Ari's practice has spanned across moving image, performance, installation, and writing, and she utilises research methods from the Institutional Critique movement in art to synthesise the cultural trauma held in the body in relation to tangible structures of power. Ari has exhibited recent works with Immigration Museum, The Substation, and Gertrude Contemporary, and Seventh Gallery. In 2021, Ari was one of the inaugural recipients of Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV)’s Diasporas Commissions. Ari is currently in production for How do I let you die?, a short film developed in part by the commission, premiering at Arts House as part of a hybrid theatre work of the same title written by Michele Lee.


ANANTA THITANAT
Ananta Thitanat is a self-taught filmmaker and photographer with over 12 years of experience in documentary making. Ananta was born in Bangkok, Thailand and raised by a worker at Siam cinema. Ananta has participated in international forums and workshops including Docs By The Sea in Indonesia, and Yamagata Documentary Dojo in Japan. She gained recognition for her debut feature documentary, Scala, which was selected for multiple international film festivals and received critical acclaim. Scala premiered at the 72nd Berlin Film Festival's Forum section, and went on to screen at international film festivals including the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, World Film Festival of Bangkok, and Hot Docs. The film won the EIDF Youth Eye Award at the EBS International Documentary Festival, the Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 World Film Festival of Bangkok, honourable mention winner in the Best Mid-Length Documentary category at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and Thailand National Film Association Awards 2022 for best documentary feature.


DIENEKE JANSEN
Dieneke Jansen is an artist based Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, who works with lens-based documentary and social practice. Jansen's practice engages with tensions between site-responsive interventions, performative actions and lens-based documentary practices, and works with community to productively challenge inequality. Projects such as Dwelling on the Stoep, Jakarta Biennale, 2015, and Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery (then St Paul St Gallery), Tāmaki Makaurau, 2016; working with the Tāmaki Housing Group on exhibitions G.I. Areas A & B, 2015, and 90 DAYS+, 2018, Te Tuhi, Pakuranga), and Backdoor Doorbell Studio, Artspace Aotearoa, Tāmaki Makaurau, 2022, inform her current work, which focuses on the social dimensions of lens-based practice with inner-city residents in Tāmaki Makuarau.


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