Throughout its history abstract painting has been deployed in the service of diverse agendas across the political spectrum. More recent revelations of the CIA's covert promotion of Abstract Expressionism—in order to bolster the ideology of western capitalism during the Cold War—have prompted a further reframing of abstract painting, its language and potential meanings.

The design of chess pieces has evolved slowly over the centuries, and in the 20th century artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, Yves Tanguy and Yayoi Kusama applied themselves to the problem of designing new chess forms.  In Orthogonal/Diagonal LA based artist Nova Jiang uses regional variants of chess found in Asia and elsewhere as seeds for digitally generating 3D printed playable games.

In Pier Paulo Pasolini’s 1966 film The Hawks and the Sparrows, a father and son wander through the outskirts of Rome when they meet a talking Marxist crow. The crow not only instructs them on some of the tenets of Marxist ideology, but also tells them a fable about two Franciscan friars who are charged with the responsibility of devising a way of communicating with the hawks and the sparrows. While the friars succeed in preaching to each species separately, their attempt at bringing the birds together fails.

The often overlooked spaces of industrial areas and failed development sites are examined in Auckland artist Talia Smith’s first solo exhibition, Lead us outside, lead us out Quietly at Enjoy Gallery, Wellington. Through photography, video and a publication the exhibition examines what happens to such spaces when their intended function is abandoned.

Exploring the perceptual effect of colour, light and space, Open Facade occurs in the conceptually overlapping; inside and outside, space and form. The work mediates, rather than separates these notions, asking the viewer for holistic consideration.

Helen Calder is a New Zealand artist whose work explores colour, extending the idea of the monochrome and bringing it from a contemplative colour field into a physical engagement.  Colour influences the way we interact with objects and spaces, and Calder’s recent work seeks to bring this phenomenon into a tangible, mindful experience.  Her use of red in Qualia 760-620λ draws from research which shows that the colour can raise the pulse and give the impression that time is passing faster than it really is.

Since the end of December, Kirsten Dryburgh and Xin Cheng have been working through a self-directed art-making bootcamp at Enjoy. 

Headcount comprises works by a group of contemporary artists using photography: Peter Madden, Richard Orjis, Greg Semu and Christian Thompson. All four artists have worked in the Pacific, or with Pacific themes, and in various ways have engaged the baroque and its iconographies. Headcount uses the theories of Mieke Bal’s Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History, as one starting point to consider how the quotation of the Baroque can influence our interpretations of artworks in both the past and the present.

"It is impossible to say what an individual is doing unless we have tacitly accepted the essentially arbitrary modes of interpretation that social tradition is constantly suggesting to us from the very moment of our birth. Let anyone who doubts this try the experiment of making a painstaking report of the actions of a group of natives engaged in some activity, say religious, to which he has not the cultural key. If he is a skilful writer, he may succeed in giving a picturesque account of what he sees and hears, or thinks he sees and hears, but the chances of his being able to give a relation of what happens, in terms that would be intelligible and acceptable to the natives themselves, are practically nil"

Edward Sapir quoted in Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory. A History of Theories of culture, (Walnut Creek, C: AltaMira Press, 1992) 571

Bringing together the work of Auckland artist Melissa Laing and Wellington artist Kerry Ann Lee, this exhibition consists of a series of installations, digital videos, sonic art and publications that explore notions of migration and settlement in New Zealand.

Through The Keyhole brings together the work of three artists: leading contemporary Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf, Auckland artist Edith Amituanai and Wellington-based artist Claire Harris. The exhibition consists of a series of staged photographs and short films that explore the representation and semiotics of guilt and shame as twin emotions but at the same time antagonistic: guilt is determined by self-perception whereas shame requires an audience. The concepts of these mental states differ between cultures but are generally associated with being negatively evaluated because one has failed to meet standards or expectations regarded as right, desirable or appropriate.

Living Space is a collaborative project between Simon Morris and Brenda Sullivan. Both artists share a common critical interest in abstraction, painting, architecture, furniture and the relationships navigated by constructed and obstructed space. Morris's practice ranges from object oriented paintings to site-responsive wall drawings and site-specific installations. For this project he has produced a range of furniture in its natural and subtle monochromatic colouring, all constructed by the artist with self-imposed restraints of scale and mathematic methods that result in zero waste of source material. Sullivan responds to this through abstract wall painting in a single colour that uses the same relation to measurements but generated by the gallery to exalt the quieter aspects of the space.

Ways of Looking consists of three coin operated aluminium machines containing text-based artworks. The units resemble an ATM or vending machine, causing the viewer to recall the behaviour associated with using these interfaces. Twenty seconds of access to the content will cost twenty cents. By paying, the viewer enters into an exchange with the unit and is prompted to make an immediate and conscious judgment of value.

Sheilah Wilson’s project engages the history of the Berry and Co. building, in which Enjoy Gallery is housed. In the 1990s while the building was undergoing renovations, a previously unknown collection of negatives dating from the early 20th Century was found in the attic. These slides are now in Te Papa’s collection and the negatives hold images of WWI era soldiers and families posing for portraits against the stylized backdrops that were popular at the time. 

Rakau Matarau is an exhibition of works on paper and cardboard combining both 2D and 3D forms. The artist blends customary Māori art forms with tattoo and graffiti style influence, representing young Māori who identify with both Māori and metropolitan culture. 

Enjoy Public Art Gallery is very excited to announce a major installation by Yona Lee. Drawing from previous works where the artist utilized steel rods to explore formal ideas relating to line and space, Tangential Structures is a work that incorporates an impossible dichotomy. Steel rods cast in such a way as to evoke movement and fluidity hang from the ceiling at Enjoy, loosely flung over rafter beams and looping playfully through the space. The very temporary gestures – careless loops, waves, curls and hooks – are at odds with the cold, hard qualities of steel, creating contradictory material behavior that behaves improperly to the forces of gravity and logic.

"If worries were things, like worms for example, I expect they would burrow right into you; make convoluted routes through and within the digestive system; sometimes crossing and colliding with one another, sometimes not."

Resonance is a solo exhibition at Enjoy Gallery presented by sonic artist and composer, Rose James. 

The concept of Te Whare Pora embodies the idea of a house of learning and is customarily a space for obtaining knowledge pertaining to fibre arts, primarily weaving. The atua of Te Whare Pora is Hineteiwaiwa who holds authority over the arts pursued by women. Over their residency, the artists are interested in engaging with Te Whare Pora from a contemporary perspective and will be using new media to signify its importance within the 21st Century, creating work by extracting and distilling signifiers of the wharenui experience. 

Ménage à Trois is an exhibition exchange between three artist‐run gallery spaces in the Asia Pacific region: Enjoy Public Art Gallery (NZ), XYZ Collective (JP) and TCB artinc (AUS).