The crab and the rock: landing at the resort is the second part of a project by Deanna Dowling that extends her ongoing research into the architectural design and lifespans of domestic dwellings. Pairing moving image works with architectural interventions, the exhibition is a further development of a solo exhibition, The crab and the rock〈螃蟹與岩石〉commissioned by Enjoy and presented at Taipei Contemporary Art Center earlier this year. Taking this as a starting point, the installation speculates further on architectural relations as well as the recontextualisation of documentation and other materials within a different setting.

This iteration of Present Tense : Wāhine Toi Aotearoa at Enjoy is the last stop on a touring exhibition of posters by more than 100 women and non-binary designers, generated through an open call by Designers Speak (Up) earlier this year.

Technologies are bound to fail. Screens crack, cables get shredded, old models are quickly replaced by newer ones, or things just don’t work as they should. A broad set of discourses and industries so optimistic in the claims they make—to make life better, easier, more efficient—and so embedded within capitalist logics of growth, innovation and progress cannot help but embarrass themselves when things go awry. For Louisa Beatty and David Ed Cooper, there’s potential in failure. Deploying dry humour and improvisation, both artists alter, remake and reconfigure everyday technologies, playfully exposing the ideological mechanisms at play in the production of these objects, and motioning towards a radically altered relation to technology and the world.

Whakawhanaungatanga: meaning to establish relationships or to find connection with one another through experiences.

From 16-19 October, curator and artist Māia Abraham will undertake a residency at Enjoy that departs from a broad set of questions surrounding whakawhanaungatanga and creative practices, asking: How is whakawhanaungatanga important? What do these relational practices look like? How does whakawhanaungatanga relate to the development of creative practice?

Offspring of rain is an installation by Sorawit Songsataya that experiments in redefining our immediate bond with the natural world. Elaborating on the highly dynamic attributes of water into liquid, crystal or vapour that shapes all meteorological forces, the exhibition reinterprets natural phenomena as an intimate experience.

The Button knot: holding what was separated together

The ‘Caisson’ knot: establishing connection to the ‘world’ and us

The Endless knot: Typically seen as the ‘good luck knot’; ultimate, eternal blessings, friendship and connection  

Kaikohe is a small town located in Northland, a town that reflects the village culture my fāmili (family) were accustomed to back in Tonga. My ongo mātuʻa (parents) made the decision to raise our fāmili in Kaikohe. They left their fonua in exchange for the whenua in Aotearoa. As my father had said, “Toʻuanga fiemalie pe, he teu ave koe ki Nusila mo fanau”, God had brought us here. My parents’ migration brought about a shift in perception, towards the idea that value was only obtained through Western knowledge.

Ordinary things will be signs for us is a project by Pōneke-based artist and designer Kerry Ann Lee. Taking Enjoy’s 19-year archive of printed ephemera as a starting point, Lee has created a collage installation of graphic fragments that explores the social architecture of Enjoy’s history.

For The making of bread, etc. artist Zoe Thompson-Moore will made bread to be shared at selected Enjoy events between May 2019 and August 2020, collaborating with other women who bake bread at home for each iteration of the project.

From the beginning of May, Enjoy will temporarily operate in a slightly different way. Our built-in office and storage at 1/147 Cuba Street will be dismantled and rearranged as we pause the exhibition programme to establish a flexible space for work, discussion and gathering.

Please join us for Home Movies, a series of screenings of films by Jonas Mekas, Chantal Akerman, Moyra Davey and Agnès Varda from Wednesday 24–Saturday 27 April.

Dreaming of Lulu is a solo exhibition by Pōneke-based artist Christopher Ulutupu. Reimagining music videos for 1970s Samoan love songs from groups such as Punialavaa, Penina Tiafau and Tiama’a, this is the first iteration of a new body of work by Ulutupu called 5 songs that explores music’s ability to travel across diasporic, cultural and intergenerational spaces.

"Sometimes, when I drive down the street from my house, I see a woman walking backwards down the footpath. The street she walks on is long and straight, but at the end there is a corner and I wonder how smoothly she walks around this. I imagine she has done this many times and is now able to move backwards without looking behind her.

I wonder about what she is doing, this seems at first strange, but the more I’ve seen her the more neutral it becomes… mostly I try to see it for what it is… I don’t mean to be voyeuristic or overly-romanticised. But, I do wonder what it means to be walking backwards down the footpath in a world where people are always walking forwards."

Enjoy is pleased to announce Sorawit Songsataya as our 2019 Summer Resident.