Ema Tavola is a writer, curator and self described art-hustler based in South Auckland.

When working on my art projects I like to count the hours I spend working. I mark the hours off on a piece of paper taped to the wall. I’ve been doing this for years now. I feel more secure this way. I realise quality of output is more important than time spent but since I started this routine, I cannot seem to stop.

I was interested to hear that vagrancy is one of the key complaints from anti-dOCUMETA factions, of which there are several. So I decided to visit the Hessian city with no concrete plan beyond seeing a lot of art.

Though only two of the show's stars actually work in what can truthfully be described as a "gallery", and "art" makes but peripheral, fleeting cameos, Gallery Girls has been occupying my waking and working thoughts lately.

There is a lot going on between the three separate works that make up Zhoe Granger and Ashlin Raymond’s Boundless Energy exhibition. The show edges toward a substantive and very Now critique of cultural autonomy and authenticity, while simultaneously engaging with the complexities of having such a discussion in the context of a scene of young Auckland artists.

The weather is particularly awful today, and this moves me to suggest a film. Adam Luxton, who just arrived back from Berlin, has a film showing tonight in the Festival. The gallery Hopkinson Cundy features in a few scenes, and the film uses my "dire and damp concrete jungle" (thank you Paula Booker for that great quote!) of a hometown, AK City, for its backdrop. There are also some great cameos from local artists and musicians.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the personal and the collective is brought together in an exhibition titled Possible Composition as part of the 2012 Biennale of Sydney. All Our Relations, the eighteenth Sydney Biennale, “focuses on inclusionary practices of generative thinking, such as collaboration, conversation and compassion, in the face of coercion and destruction.”

- SCENE 1 -

Raewyn Martyn in conversation with Simon Morris and Erica Van Zon 

Transcribed by Duncan McNaughton