Tīpurepure Au Va’ine is an exhibition featuring the works of the Porirua based Cook Islands sewing group of the same name and multi-disciplinary artist, Jamie Berry. Through the work of tīvaevae and soundscape, these artists pay homage to whakapapa, imagery and oro (sound) reminiscent of their homelands. This offsite exhibition at Begonia House, curated by Tehani Ngapare Rau-Te-Tara Buchanan, honours the many Cook Islanders who have found Begonia House to be a place of connection and inspiration while living in the diaspora.

Maungarongo (Ron) Te Kawa’s exhibition Rutu, Rongo and Rita originated last summer, when the artist spent time as the Rita Angus resident at the historic cottage in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

During this period, Te Kawa researched Angus while beginning a series of nine wall hangings. Angus’ painting Rutu (1951) in particular interested him. While the work is often referred to as one of Angus’ many self-portraits, Bronwyn Lloyd notes that Angus herself considered it an “imaginary portrait.” [1] Described as a “beautiful, incongruous mash-up of cultures” by Matariki Williams, Rutu is “the most visible and well-known exemplar of a person of colour in Angus’s catalogue” [2], an aspect that holds Te Kawa’s attention as he explores the themes of skin colour politics in Aotearoa’s past, present, and future. In Rutu Goes to Waitangi for Target Practice (2024-25), Te Kawa asks what kind of Pākehā Rutu would be now; ultimately believing that she would be covered in “Tino Rangatiratanga swag…hurling dildos at David Seymour.” [3] Expanding beyond Rutu, he has taken figures from Māori mythology such as Pania of the Reef and pop culture including Amy Winehouse, and re-envisioned them with compassion, humour and hope. The works displayed in this exhibition are an exploration into the themes of skin colour politics in Aotearoa’s past, present, and future.

1. Bronwyn Llyod, “Rutu”, Te Papa, https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/39499.

2. Matariki Williams, “Rita and Rutu”, Newsroom, 01/02/2022, https://newsroom.co.nz/2022/02/01/waitangi-week-rita-in-blackface/.

3. Email correspondence with the artist, 20/01/2025.

In Iterations/Alterations, Catherine Griffiths expands upon her past work while also responding to current events. Griffiths presents a body of work that is ever-evolving, referencing global social and political issues. Unwavering support of Palestine is a focus for the artist, who interrogates her priorities and perspectives amidst the genocide being committed by Israel. Included in this exhibition is a limited edition run of GAZ/A prints—the proceeds from which will go to a charity supporting Palestinians in Gaza.

Low Tide emerges as a contemplation of queer mundanity. Through the mundane, Manuha’apai Vaeatangitau (Manu Vaea) counteracts the pressure to be extraordinary and instead highlights the quiet, repetitive and often unremarkable moments that define everyday life.

By insisting on the ordinary, Vaea aims to “induce a state that allows for emotions to simmer under the skin without a need for expression.” [1] She has been shaped by ties to family, space and place in Tāmaki Makaurau and Tonga, observing that “these geographies often serve as sacred, yet fractured mirrors, reflecting back my own inner turbulence.” [2] Scenes from the domestic life of the artist in both of her homes in Tāmaki and Tonga feature moments alone, art-making with whānau and nights out with friends. Centering Low Tide around queer mundanity and what sits in the cracks of that—grief, malaise, regret—has allowed Vaea to work through her own mamae without resorting to the oft-overused trauma and pervasive larger-than-life love narratives regularly imposed on queerness. 

1. Email correspondence with the artist, 27/01/2025.

2. Ibid.

In Funny how I’m always on the head of a longing arrow, Henrietta Fisher presents an anthology of vignettes interrogating the interplay of bodies, technology and practices of communion. 

In Extraordinary Contact, Alexandra McFarlane delves into the liminal space between belief and experience, exploring alien abduction narratives as a lens to examine trauma, memory, and the search for meaning. Anchored in her own childhood memory of a devastating house fire in Ōtautahi, the exhibition reflects on how extraordinary events shape our sense of self and reality.

Māori for a Free Palestine is a kaupapa by Zines4Pal, a whānau of Ngāpuhi Aunties that love pūoro, drawing, weaving and dismantling systems and ideologies of oppression.

Stitching Solidarity is the first iteration of a collective kaupapa inspired by a long history of collaborative artist-activist quilt making. The project brings artists from across the motu together to enact solidarity with the people of Palestine, through the creation of a solidarity quilt. Each participant has contributed a fabric artwork of set dimensions. These will be stitched together in Enjoy Contemporary Art Space.

Kaka-aku is an exhibition featuring Tehani Ngapare Rau-Te-Tara Buchanan (Ngāti Rupe Makea, Rarotonga, Aitutaki, Mitiaro, Mangaia), Rosalie Koko (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga, Olosega), Bobby Luke (Ngāti Ruanui, Taranaki) and Vince Ropitini (Taranaki, Ngāruahinerangi, Whakatōhea).

BedStageAltar brings together seven artists from across the mōtu on the first weekend of Spring. Hosted by Enjoy Contemporary Art Space and curated by Elvis Booth-Claveria, this event celebrates live performance through the provocation of The Earth is my Bed, my Stage, my Altar. These three sites act as pillars, outlining the spaces that hold our lives in balance and from which the ultimate form performance of experience extends and flows.

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.

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).

Enjoy is excited to be screening Wutharr, Saltwater Dreams by Karrabing Film Collective.

A portrait of a living, working ecology and the multi-species it sustains, Metabolism is a film essay that considers the body-as-land and land-as-body.

A koru is a trajectory is an exhibition originating from Heidi Brickell’s 2023 Rita Angus Residency, jointly organised by Enjoy and the Rita Angus Cottage Trust. During Brickell’s residency, she spent time connecting with her whenua, researching her legendary tūpuna Kupe and Tara and collecting rākau from Ōtaki and rimurapa from the shores of Te Raekaihau.

Gaza: the Soul of Souls, an exhibition by Justice for Palestine, is focused on Gaza, the people, our martyrs and a place where on it are, as Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish says, those who deserve to live.

The Centre Does Not Hold is an exhibition in three parts by the Palestinian artist Inas Halabi. Across a sound installation and two moving image works that address different regions mired in colonial power structures, Halabi considers the landscape as a living archive from which to excavate the (in)visible sediments of trauma and slow violence. In its invitation to look closely and listen deeply, The Centre Does Not Hold surveys the malleability of sound and image, and in doing so, unearths histories hiding in plain sight.

Hiraeth is a Welsh word describing a spiritual longing for a place that we have never been. It is the lost ancient places we imagine our ancestors would stomp their feet into their lands and the grief we struggle to locate in our bodies—a dislocated homesickness for a motherland we have never belonged to. The offerings of this exhibition illustrate the artists’ intimate and awkward rituals of becoming truly Pākehā—tangata Tiriti on their haerenga towards becoming familiar with the layers of their cultural identities and realities on this whenua and in relation to its people.

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.

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.