Present Tense : Wāhine Toi Aotearoa

Founded by designer and typographer Catherine Griffiths, Designers Speak (Up) began in 2018 as a response to the Designers Institute of New Zealand’s ongoing failure to recognise women’s contributions to and achievements within the design landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand. Since then, the initiative has strived to be an “open platform for Aotearoa New Zealand designers to have a voice.”

Exhibition contributors were given the provocation to explore any socio-political or cultural issue through the poster medium. Working with white and the digital colour “Hexadecimal Red #ff333”, the submissions have a diverse range of aesthetics and subject matter. Together, they showcase a variety of creative practices, and respond to a wide range of contexts that affect women’s lives, as individuals and within communities. They are presented as gifs, silkscreen prints and digital files. 

Over the past eight months, these poster works have been showcased on social media and on the designerspeakup.nz website, as well as in galleries, public sites and creative spaces.

Beginning with an exhibition in Kirikiriroa Hamilton at RAMP Gallery in April 2019, Present Tense : Wāhine Toi Aotearoa has been exhibited at Laurel Projects, Ōtepoti Dunedin; Te Pu o Wheke Arts, Kaikohe; Ilam Campus Gallery, Ōtautahi Christchurch; and on Phantom Billboards in Britomart, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. The project has been accompanied by writing from women artists, designers, critics and curators, who have contributed critical responses and further discourse to this online archive.

This exhibition has been described by its organisers as a hīkoi, and hosting the last iteration of it prompts the question: what happens now at the end of the journey? The project itself has expanded from a protest into a new space for the design community. During the exhibition at Enjoy, an accompanying public programme will explore the potential of this new space and what might happen within—and beyond it—in the future to pursue new dialogues in design.