Enjoy our new series of artist interviews, conducted by Tautai Arts Intern Sophia Amore Coghini, for a cheeky little insight into what several artists got up to this lockdown. We're starting with Tāmaki Makaurau artists whose planned exhibitons at Enjoy have been disrupted or reschedueled due to Covid Alert level 4 and 3 restrictions.

Artist Ruby 嫦潔 White's exhibition Pieces of  is in its final week at Enjoy. Ruby's ceramic works/cookers/creatures are currently stranded in Te Whanganui a Tara until restrictions are lifted allowing Ruby to come pick them up.

This introductory essay was written by Grace Ryder for Help Yourself an exhibition co-authored by Turumeke Harrington and Grace Ryder with Sarah Hudson, Saskia Leek, Kristin Leek and Greta Menzies (28 May-10 July 2021).

The reading list that follows includes texts referenced in Ryder's writing as well as readings and books instrumental to Harrington and Ryder's respective practices, their friendship and their collaborative work devising Help Yourself. Copies of these texts are available in Enjoy's reading room for the duration of the exhibition.

This reading list was compiled by artist Areez Katki alongside the exhibition History reserves but a few lines for you at Enjoy (19 Feb–3 April 2021). 

The texts below have been instrumental to the artist’s research and practice, with many works in the show responding to the poems and themes of the titles below.

Enjoy sells a small but beautiful range of artist-led and small-press publications, including titles from our own archive of two decades of publishing. In this post, former Gallery Administrator Nina Dyer takes a look through our shelves and offers insight into some of her top picks.

Nina has recently moved to Tāmaki Makaurau, where she has taken on the role of Exhibition Curator and Manager at Depot Artspace.

Our exhibition This is a library draws upon curator Hanahiva Rose’s ongoing research into Pacific exhibition histories in Aotearoa. Here, Rose shares a list of readings and resources that contributed to her thinking, and offer insight into the practices of the four artists included in the show: Teuane Tibbo, Claudia Jowitt, Christina Pataialii and Salome Tanuvasa.

In August 2019, Enjoy presented Matavai Taulangau’s solo exhibition Ma‘u Pe Kai. Documenting three kumala harvests—one by the Tongan community in Okaihau, Northland, one by the artist’s mother in nearby Kaikohe, and one by the artist in Tāmaki Makaura—Taulangau’s moving image installation highlighted forms of labour that are often overlooked, emphasising the value of people and their experience.

Taulangau invited friend and fellow artist Salome Tanuvasa, whose work is included in our current exhibition This is a library, curated by Hanahiva Rose, to reflect on his work. We’re delighted to share Tanuvasa’s text with you.

When Enjoy relocated earlier this year, we established a new reading room and multi-use space, and expanded our library collections through a number of generous donations from art spaces and publishers from Aotearoa, as well as new purchases from international art publishers such as World Food Books, Printed Matter and Sternberg Press. In this post, archive and library intern Connie Brown previews some of her favourite new titles. Enjoy’s reading room is an open-access resource for students, artists, writers and the general public for reading, research and collaboration. We invite you to pop in anytime during our opening hours and read some of these new books!

Between May 2018 and April 2019, Enjoy's former archives and library intern Imogen Simmonds catalogued and rehoused our archive, making it easier to navigate and accessible to visitors in our new reading room. In this series of blog posts, Imogen reflects on interesting moments from Enjoy’s 19-year history, and considers how our past projects have helped shape who we are today. Read Snapshot #1 here. Read Snapshot #2 here.

Between May 2018 and April 2019, Enjoy's former archives and library intern Imogen Simmonds catalogued and rehoused our archive. In this series of blog posts, Imogen reflects on interesting moments from Enjoy’s 19-year history, and considers how our past projects have helped shape who we are today. Read Snapshot #1 here.

Archives and library intern Imogen Simmonds has spent the year cataloguing Enjoy’s archive. In this series of blog posts, Imogen reflects on interesting moments from Enjoy’s 18-year history, and considers how our past projects have helped shape who we are today.

Between 24 and 29 September 2018, designer Katie Kerr was in residence at Enjoy as part of the project A working week. In this blog, Kerr reflects on her time using the gallery as a site of development for her soon-to-be-published project Dirt with GLORIA.

At the end of last year, we said goodbye to our long-standing photographer Shaun Matthews, who volunteered with the gallery for over two years. Shaun is an incredible photographer whose work Incursion is currently on display at Otari Wilton's Bush, the Wellington Botanic Gardens, Mount Victoria and Bush City at Te Papa.

Following the publication of his second book Incredibly Hot Sex with Hideous People: Diary Comics, our Communications and Publications Manager Louise Rutledge interviewed artist/zinemaker/lecturer/father/comic-diarist Bryce Galloway to discuss oversharing, feminism, PBRF and how a book of comic panels is edited.

Since launching in 2008 as a modest 20pg, staple bound publication, Matters has established itself, intermittently, as a critical, non-commercial and independent arts journal in Aotearoa New Zealand. Following the release of Issue 7, our Communications and Publications Manager Louise spoke with editors George Watson and Hamish Win on the journal’s history, ethos, and where it might go next.

There are many points of entry into labour politics. That is the nature of advanced capitalism. Labour has become first nature and our existence demands that we participate in its politics. Yet this ‘we’ is overwhelmingly singular. Representation is exclusive, marking difference invisible or incomprehensible through the lens of the dominant culture. The knowledge of a reduced and individualised subjectivity is being produced elsewhere, sold back to us, transformed beyond any reconcilable image of our own realities.

Ahead of her exhibition Namesake with Salome Tanuvasa, Quishile Charan talked with artist and writer Dilohana Lekamge about her textile practice, her family, and what the response to her work has been like so far. As an emerging artist of Indo-Fijian heritage living and working in Aotearoa New Zealand, Charan uses traditional modes of textile making to reflect upon the landscape of indentured labour and its ongoing post-colonial effects on the Indo-Fijian community. 

Lana Lopesi is a multi-disciplinary writer and artist based in Auckland. She is the Visual Arts Co-Editor of The Pantograph Punch and Contributing Editor for Design Assembly. Much of Lopesi’s work deals with themes of her Pacific heritage and the intersections of gender and ethnicity. In this interview I speak with her about the state of criticism in Aotearoa, addressing the preconceptions of who can engage in critique and the ways which we might open more constructive discourses around art.

Auckland-based artist John Vea’s practice is rooted in the simple act of storytelling—spending time with migrant workers and the cultural minorities of Aotearoa New Zealand, talking through their experiences and what is involved in their daily lives. The research Vea collects is almost solely conducted through talanoa: an experience of sharing ideas, stories and conversation that is almost always face-to-face. Vea translates these verbal accounts into performance art, video and sculptural installations. 

While on summer residency at Enjoy from 30 January – 19 February, Riff Raff co-opted the gallery space as their production house. Their aim was to develop a new contemporary art collection of donated work from artists and the general public throughout the nation, provisionally titled the 'Trust us Contemporary Art Trust' (TUCAT).

Our wonderful design intern Ellyse Randrup recently sent through some photographs of the posters she designed for Enjoy in 2016.