PAST EXHIBITIONS

God the Mechanical Mother

Kat Lang

17 Feb – 16 Mar
Courtesy of the artist.

Courtesy of the artist.

2024

God the Mechanical Mother is an exhibition of extraction and post-metaphysical effluvia. Kat Lang experiments with primordial and time-bound materiality, and offers a deconstructed ontotheological study into the implications of meaning and uncertainty.

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Proposal for a Body

Georgina Brett, Jo Bragg

17 Feb – 16 Mar
Courtesy of the artists.

Courtesy of the artists.

2024

Proposal for a Body posits that sound and text-matter are mediums that can be regarded as inherently queer in their expansive and corporally liminal states. Jo Bragg and Georgina Brett present immaterial or bodiless practices focused on experimental process and experience rather than resolved closed-outcomes.

 

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A Map So Big It Blocks the Sun

Quentin Lind

24 Nov 2023 – 3 Feb 2024
Quentin Lind, A Map So Big It Blocks the Sun, 2023. Courtesy of Cheska Brown.

Quentin Lind, A Map So Big It Blocks the Sun, 2023. Courtesy of Cheska Brown.

2023

A Map So Big It Blocks the Sun is a new film by Quentin Lind, taking Jorge Luis Borges' short story On Exactitude in Science as a starting point. Borges’ 1946 story was partly influenced by a novel by Lewis Carroll Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), in which a character notes that they made a map on a mile to mile scale, but they have not yet used it, as farmers objected due to concerns it would cover the entire country and block out the sunlight. Instead, they “now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.” Those in Borges’ story similarly pursued ‘perfection’ in the form of a 1:1 scale map. Their descendants “were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears” and saw no need for it. Readers of both stories are required to have a wry sense of humour in the face of impending horror.

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All This Work Is Necessary

Ashleigh Taupaki

24 Nov 2023 – 3 Feb 2024
Ashleigh Taupaki, Map Layers 1 - 200, 2022-23, pen on tracing paper, rocks from Hauraki waterways. Courtesy of Cheska Brown.

Ashleigh Taupaki, Map Layers 1 - 200, 2022-23, pen on tracing paper, rocks from Hauraki waterways. Courtesy of Cheska Brown.

2023

Haere mai, nau mai
Haere mai, kuhu mai ki ngā hūhā o Ruawehea.

Welcome welcome
Welcome through the whakapapa of Ruawehea.

All This Work Is Necessary is an extension of Ashleigh Taupaki’s doctoral research investigating her Ngāti Hako connections to the Hauraki wetlands. The artist’s whakapapa is an essential part of her practice. Taupaki’s tūpuna are said to be the earliest settlers of Hauraki. Though Ngāti Hako records, such as pūrākau and waiata, have sadly been decimated over time due to inter-iwi wars and colonial settlement, she has spent years pouring over surviving records written by those who sought to oppress Māori through imperial power structures. The resulting artworks are a testament to Taupaki’s determination to convey the systemic decline of the Hauraki wetlands.

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Mirai Nikki (Future Diary)

カツオ(のえ)ブ(ォ)シ, Chugen Nakahara, Hana Kobori, Hisao Kobori, Kazuya Tateishi, Kyohei Sakaguchi, Makiko Tomita, Masaaki Oyamada, Mayu Kanamori, Moeko Sonoda, Ravi Masaki, Shinoka Sekihara, TASKAM, Utageguruma, 青い

31 May – 24 Jun 2023
Image courtesy of Kikuchi University.

Image courtesy of Kikuchi University.

2023

Mirai Nikki (Future Diary) is an exhibition exchange between Kikuchi University, Kumamoto, Japan, and Enjoy Contemporary Art Space. The exhibition is a scrapbook of what might or might not be, and a contemplation of the future. Artists have been encouraged to consider their personal and collective relationships to the future from their own perspective.

The exhibition includes work by 青い, Mayu Kanamori, カツオ(のえ)ブ(ォ)シ, Hana Kobori, Hisao Kobori, Ravi Masaki, Chugen Nakahara, Masaaki Oyamada, Kyohei Sakaguchi, Shinoka Sekihara, Moeko Sonoda, TASKAM, Kazuya Tateishi, Makiko Tomita and Utageguruma.

 
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Ocean of Whispers

Elsie Andrewes, Jasmine Tuiā, Jimmy Ma'ia'i, Kasi Valu, Natasha Ratuva

19 Nov 2022 – 4 Feb 2023
Elsie Andrewes, Drink, 2022, digital painting.

Elsie Andrewes, Drink, 2022, digital painting.

2022

A grandmother’s sweet hymn carries keynotes of prayers in a grandchild’s memory, stacking plastic chairs are dragged back into storage, dented from the joy and grieving of mass family gatherings. Paternal and maternal kinship ties deepen through time-honoured iTaukei ceremonies with masi, a kala-noa calls ‘autalavou laiti (youth) to fall in love with their stories marked on tapa.

Ocean of Whispers brings together measina from Elsie Andrewes (Navala, Nakoroboya, Ba. Fiji, Pākehā), Jimmy Ma’ia’i (Sapapali’i and Fasito’outa, Samoa and Edinburgh, Scotland), Natasha Ratuva (Naioti, Bualomanihoro, Fiji), Jasmine Tuiā (Matautu Lefaga, Falefa, Anoama’a, Malifa, Samoa)  and Kasi Valu (Lapaha and Ma’ufanga, Tonga). 

Curated by Etanah Falagā Talapā.

On behalf of Enjoy, fa’afetai tele, vinaka vakalevu, malo ‘aupito to everyone who generously donated to our BoostedxMoana campaign in 2021. It is with your love, trust and support that Ocean of Whispers has been realised.


 

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Through Claystone Eyes

Eleanor Díaz Ritson

24 Sep – 5 Nov 2022
Eleanor Díaz Ritson, Cuerpo Cueva (Cave Body), 2022, water-mixable oil on canvas, 60.7 x 83.5 cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Eleanor Díaz Ritson, Cuerpo Cueva (Cave Body), 2022, water-mixable oil on canvas, 60.7 x 83.5 cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

2022
Summer Residency

“Through my claystone eyes, I experience both body and place as lively; unmoving yet turbulent…Body-form becomes earth-form, landscapes of bone, rock and earth fluidly span time to the inner reaches of our bodies and minds.”-Through Claystone Eyes, Eleanor Díaz Ritson.

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Everybody SoundSystem

Eve Armstrong, Gabby O’Connor, Josephine Cachemaille

13 Aug – 10 Sep 2022
Image: Everybody SoundSystem, design by Jayne Joyce.

Image: Everybody SoundSystem, design by Jayne Joyce.

2022

Everybody SoundSystem is a project about friendship and the transformative potential of creative collective endeavor. For artists Eve Armstrong, Josephine Cachemaille and Gabby O’Connor, dance parties were their first experiences of making installations. These endeavors often involved activating spaces by enhancing sensory environments, usually through repurposing found materials and an ethos of ‘making do’.

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Document Scales

Ziggy Lever

29 Jul – 15 Sep 2022
Ziggy Lever, Site Visit, Rockhounds, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.

Ziggy Lever, Site Visit, Rockhounds, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.

2022

There is an awkwardness to the way in which a sheet of A4 paper fits inside of a foolscap filing box. ‘Foolscap’ in the name refers to the foolscap folio, a paper size that is uncommonly used and yet boxes made to its specific measurements are ubiquitous. Though they feel slightly too long for the A4 scale, the foolscap filing box has become standard in the storage of documents, receipts, notes and exchanges.[1]

On a visit to the North Shore Rockhounds, Ron holds a slice of rock up to a cabochon sizing chart. Here a series of holes are used to guide the shaping of the rock into predetermined scales.[2] The guides sit in old ice-cream containers, alongside the home-made tools and collections of the other rockhounds. Slices of rock, ready to be shaped are filed in trays under workbenches. 

In the Neues Museum in Berlin, a display of delicate stone tablets and sheets of papyrus slide back and forth from within a series of hidden drawers. Pressing a button on the side of the cabinet labelled “Knowledge: Mathematics and Astronomy”, the third drawer from the top slowly moves out and past the camera. After a short time, the drawer retreats, reducing its exposure to sunlight.

 

[1] The foolscap filing box usually measures 15x10x3.3” (381x254x84mm) and can be found in abundance in offices, archives, and homes.  

[2] Cabochons are judged on their conformity to scale, as well as their subjective qualities

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On Blushing

Alice Langbrown, Dayle Palfreyman, Steph Arrowsmith, Willa Smart

10 Jun – 21 Jul 2022
Stephanie Arrowsmith, Ice in Twilight, 2022, oil on linen.

Stephanie Arrowsmith, Ice in Twilight, 2022, oil on linen.

2022

Eros exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counter-glance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive. But the boundaries of time and glance and language are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, in the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, that I realise I never can. 

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Ko wai a Māpihi? This is not water.

Cae Te Wheoro Heke, Nick Denton

14 Apr – 28 May 2022
Image courtesy of Nick Denton and Cae Heke.

Image courtesy of Nick Denton and Cae Heke.

2022

Pōneke is a city full of streams. At least five run through the district named Te Aro, formerly amongst diverse wetlands and gardens, meeting Te Whanganui-a-Tara at the shoreline of Te Aro Pā.

They are still here. Waimapihi flows down from the gully in Waimapihi Reserve, through a forest of trees reaching up like vines into a shaded canopy. It meets the top of Holloway Road, channelled through a low concrete wall, a steel grate, and a pipe. It follows the road down Aro Street. If you know where to stand you can hear the gushing, tumbling of a waterfall under your feet. It traces ancient pathways now hidden, underneath buildings, crossing streets and the hum of people. Finally, Waimapihi flows past the foundations of Te Aro Pā at the end of Taranaki Street, before its waters rejoin Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

The stream is named for Māpihi (Ngāi Tara, Ngāti Māmoe) a wahine Rangatira who bathed here, although her stories are also hidden from view to most who cross her stream. Fish follow its course up and down dark underground paths, migrating through brick culverts and reinforced concrete apertures. Kōkopu can be seen upstream, and tuna and kōaro are among a thousand other species who touch this awa. Except, Waimapihi, for most of its length, is not a stream. It’s not even water.

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Wishing you well

Hanna Shim 심한나

11 Feb – 30 Mar 2022
Hanna Shim, One day I’ll fly on the bird, 2021, digital video and animated pencil drawing, 0:45, still.

Hanna Shim, One day I’ll fly on the bird, 2021, digital video and animated pencil drawing, 0:45, still.

2022

Soft, sewn sculptures by Hanna Shim 심한나 make space for elastic encounters within the rigid white walls of a gallery space. One of the artist’s goals in creating pliable art is to defeat the architecture that restrains and constrain the artist and their works from the wildness of making.

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Kua whati te rākau

Hōhua Thompson

11 Feb – 30 Mar 2022
Hōhua Thompson, Kua whati te rākau research image, 2022, digital drawing.

Hōhua Thompson, Kua whati te rākau research image, 2022, digital drawing.

2022

Tension and precarity are not new concepts for most cultures, especially since the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Māori have dealt with these issues before. Great migrations, wars and the constant onslaught of colonisation have given us examples of how our tīpuna handled these situations.

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