Bound in secret knots
Bena Jackson and Teresa Collins, After looking in the shed we looked on top, 2021, digital video, still. Image courtesy of the artists.
now on
19 Feb
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3 Apr
Bena Jackson, Teresa Collins
Working with discarded goods and salvaged materials, Bound in secret knots includes new sculptural and moving image works by Pōneke Wellington-based artists Bena Jackson and Teresa Collins.
Jackson and Collins’ new project departs from a self-imposed limitation: to produce an exhibition from discarded goods. The project follows months of engaging with different processes of gathering—from requesting scraps from local businesses and collecting from public pavements, to making use of online forums, and a public call for unwanted items held at Enjoy in July 2020. The use of found materials extends to the small details; used nails and screws found in a cup in the gallery’s storeroom, and holes patched with plastic straws.
Looking towards the informal networks within which objects circulate, the artists consider cycles of consumption under advanced capitalism, proposing playful, unlikely uses for what would otherwise be consigned to waste. Jackson and Collins remain sensitive to the affective charge many of their materials may have held, or still hold, for their former owners, while proposing new routes for meaning making and storytelling. The installation enquires into forms of assigned value and to spaces where alternatives to a monetary economy already thrive.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Teresa Collins most often works with painting and sculpture. Recent exhibitions and curatorial projects include Hi Hi Walls at MEANWHILE, Pōneke, 2020; 6021/1052 with Gabrielle Stoddard at Window Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 2020; 2+2+2 at Precinct35, Pōneke, 2020; and Storm water solutions with Bena Jackson at Toi Pōneke, 2019. Teresa holds a BFA from Massey University.
Bena Jackson primarily works with installation and moving images. She holds a BFA from Massey University, and is a facilitator at Play_Station. Recent exhibitions include: Same thing everyday, with Max Fleury at Window Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau 2020; Golden light in the dairy, with Rob Cherry at {Suite}, Pōneke, 2020; One Who Goes Quickly, with Max Fleury for Circuit's Masons Screen, Pōneke, 2020; and Storm water solutions, with Teresa Collins at Toi Pōneke, 2019.
History reserves but a few lines for you
Image: Areez Katki, In Small Places (Farrokh & Sohrab), 2018, cotton thread hand embroidery, hand-loomed tea towel. Image courtesy of the artist.
now on
19 Feb
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3 Apr
Areez Katki
For History reserves but a few lines for you, Areez Katki presents a series of textile works which build upon the artist’s ongoing enquiries into craft traditions, sites of queer intimacy and the complexities of migratory experience.
This exhibition includes works produced and exhibited over the past three years, alongside a suite of new embroidered handkerchiefs. Together, Katki’s works gesture towards the narrative potential of textile practice—drawing from autobiographical episodes and Parsi needlecraft traditions—as well as to a reconsideration of feminised forms of labour within the domestic sphere.
Common household textiles—tea towels, handkerchiefs, upholstery silk—provide the ground for Katki’s elaborately sewn arrangements, which are here laid out in the gallery to suggest a space of refuge, communion or dwelling. Drawing upon a litany of queer figures, from David Hockney’s lithographs, to the writing of Constantine P. Cavafy and Ocean Vuong, Katki’s works examine the sites at which expressions of queer desire intersect with unresolved histories of social and legal prohibition and the colonial gaze.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Areez Katki’s practice explores his genetic heritage and landscape through processes that include writing, embroidery, weaving, painting and printmaking. Born into a Persian Zoroastrian family in Mumbai, India, his work addresses the social constructs of spirituality, postcolonial identity and sexuality while, at the same time, raising questions about the political nature of craft itself.
Areez has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Auckland and recently completed a Masters in creative writing from Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters. Recent projects include Thieves’ Market, The National, Ōtautahi Chrictchurch, 2021; On Chroma, Sumer Gallery, Tauranga, 2020; Notes & Methods, Tim Melville Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 2020; Even the birds are walking (group), Latitude 53, Edmonton, Canada, 2020; Some Retained Delights, RM Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau, 2019; Uncruising (solo culmination after a 3-month-long gallery residency), Phoenix, Athens, 2019; Come, Remember (with Ophelia King), Window Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau, 2019 ; Making Conversation (group), The Dowse Museum, Te Awakairangi Lower Hutt, 2019; Bildungsroman, Malcolm Smith Gallery and the Otago Museum, Ōtepoti Dunedin 2019-20; Marabar Caves (group), The Gus Fisher Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau, 2017. Areez’s work is held by various public and private institutions across Aotearoa.