Art, Not Science

This episode of Art Not Science is a rebroadcast of one of our earliest episodes; Art Not Science Episode 4 this evening becomes episode 62. Artists Rhea Maheshwari and Kahurangiariki Smith discuss their exhibition Two Oceans at Once with Charlotte Huddleston, reorienting historical time in order to critique colonial legacies. The force of the ocean as both metaphor and articulation of home remains present in Kahurangiariki’s practice. One of the artists commissioned to develop a new moving image for our current exhibition Homing Instinct, Kahurangiariki’s work Mā te Moana was formed during time in Rarotonga, swimming near to where many ancestral waka departed for Aotearoa. Tracking travel between Rarotonga and Cambodia, Mā te Moana responds to the push and pull of the ocean, and ongoing indigenous mobility through the moana.

In this episode, we share a poem and an interview from our curriculum session hosted by Samoa House Library in the context of our recent exhibition, Distance is a blade, curated by Amy Weng. The poem, In the Animal Garden of My Body, by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, and the interview between Hans Demeyer and Lauren Berlant, Intimacy as World-Making, both orbit themes of memory, intimacy, and affective forms of myth-making that were central to the exhibition.

In this episode we continue on from Episode 57 with the remaining readings from Correspondence 3.1: Conversations about the weather can no longer be regarded as small talk. Hana Pera Aoake reads their essay Meeting the Lake, and Honey Brown reads Non-Human Others and Kaupapa Māori Research by Te Kawehau Hoskins and Alison Jones.

In this episode, we will be sharing with you a conversation between Abby Cunnane and Dayle Palfreyman. Dayle is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, working in sculpture and installation, primarily using metal and beeswax. Dayle's work was recently included in The Physics Room exhibition I'm so into you, co-curated by Abby and Jess Clifford. This discussion around Dayle's work The loosener of limbs focuses on some of the influences on their practice, including translations of Sappho and the knowledge of bees.

Cello Forrester's composition I'd go eight miles for you plays at the end of this episode.

In this episode, we will be sharing with you a recent talk: Interrogating Notions of Peace by Mahdis Azarmandi. The talk offers an exploration into the intricacies of 'peace' against a backdrop of genocide and colonial violence. Her talk challenges conventional understandings of peace and violence, emphasising the practice of 'hope as a discipline' as a pathway towards imagining a world without war.

In this episode we share a selection of readings from Correspondence 3.1: Conversations about the weather can no longer be regarded as small talk. This issue contains contributions by Raewyn Martyn, Isabella Loudon, Melissa Macleod, Orissa Keane and Loulou Callister-Baker which address making art during a climate emergency, with a particular focus on material matters.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing with you two audio tracks by Ōtautahi based artist Luke Shaw. These works were originally made as part of an installation work, Sleepwalker, which was shown at RM Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau in late 2023. In this presentation the work is stripped back to audio only, by the Opawa 45s: Luke Shaw and bandmate Luke Wood. Sleepwalker draws from an archive of found slide images, and uses processes of rerecording, imagining a sleepwalker as a kind of spectral figure with the ability to move fluidly between memories and cinematic planes.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing with you audio fragments by artists Selina Ershadi and James Tapsell-Kururangi. These fragments were selected from existing film works, field recordings, and personal archives, and formed in collaboration with sound artists and designers. For this episode the artists wanted to extend their thinking behind their work in My throat/a shelter, on the temporality inherent within the medium of sound, and how auditory experiences might suggest how histories can reverberate in the present. This episode was conceived as an ephemeral listening experience and is no longer available.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing readings from Correspondence issue 2.2. This episode includes the editorial by Orissa Keane which introduces the theme of this issue, followed by Lucy Meyle reading Particle Images, Millie Godfery reading Breathing Room, and Albert L Refiti reading Being-Social: The Context in Which the Vā Has to Embed Itself.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing a talk with Min-Young Her. Min’s project, ㅁ: each mouthful a comma or period was The Physics Room’s 2023 Ōtautahi offsite project, hosted by our friends at Movement Art Practice Studio, for one night in September. The talk focuses on the mouth, ideas of language, identity, and physical autonomy or agency as a reflection on this project, as well as how these ideas continue to inform Min’s research and thinking.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing a talk with Ana Iti, an artist currently based in Heretaunga Hastings. Ana’s solo project, I am a salt lake, is on now at The Physics Room. The talk focuses on the three core elements in Ana’s work - the mineral salt, the drawing on a foggy window, the screens of text - circling loosely round them and returning to ideas of voice, narrative, multiplicity and risk, that connect the three.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing a conversation from our Te Waipounamu offsite exhibition, Like water by water, a partnership between The Physics Room and Blue Oyster at the Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru. The show features work by Carol Anne Bauer, Dilohana Lekamge, Fiona Pardington and Suji Park. The talk takes place between Dilohana; Blue Oyster Director, Simon Palenski; and The Physics Room Curator, Amy Weng.

In this episode of Art, Not Science, we wanted to offer something restorative, reflective, potentially universe expanding, in acknowledgement of Matariki season here in Aotearoa. We return to the work of three practitioners we’ve worked with previously, a collaboration between Balamohan Shingade and Nkosi Nkululeko, and a work by sound artist Rachel Shearer, Pounamu Becoming Crystal, Part 1, from 2018.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing an artist talk with Te Whanganui-a-Tara-based artist and curator Daniel John Corbett Sanders. Daniel is interested in critical geographies and social power structures, especially the relationship between LGBTQIA+ people and political economies. Daniel’s talks about his practice and work in the recent exhibition, Backdirt, alongside Ōtautahi-based artist Priscilla Rose Howe.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing a recent artist talk with Yona Lee. Yona's exhibition, Objects in Practice, is a series of material gestures that prompt us to consider the role of iteration or rehearsal within artistic practice. Yona’s repertoire of actions, built up over time, provides a means to express the habitual and intricate drama of our everyday lives.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing a special conversation with Rei Gallery. Located at the foot of Ōhinehou, Rei Gallery consists of a collective of artists from across Aotearoa. Their kaupapa is to collectively bring the identity of Te Waipounamu forward, uphold tino rangatiratanga, and empower up and coming toi Māori practitioners. However, as we learned in this conversation, Rei is only the most recent initiative of Whakaraupō Carving Centre Trust.

In this episode, Orissa Keane be sharing a selection of readings from Correspondence Issue 2.1, The Physics Room’s biannual serial publication. This episode includes readings by Jane Wallace, David Garcia, Ziggy Lever, Isla Martin, and Erin Lee.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing a recent lecture by Carl Mika, titled Wa and it’s countercolonial possibilities: Implications for the human self. This talk confronts the terms and concepts ‘time and space’ from a Māori philosophical perspective and replaces them with the possibility that all things are in a state of profound Now-ness, which the human self participate in.

In this episode, we’ll be sharing a recent lecture by Balamohan Shingade: Singing with Practical Intent. This lecture was given on the occasion of brunelle dias’ exhibition, the way things are, incorporating a performance of Hindustani music alongside a discussion of the challenges to artmaking in the backdrop of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism).

In this episode, we’ll be sharing a recent lecture titled Beyond Safe White Spaces by Naarm-based artist, writer and curator, Andy Butler. In this lecture, Andy looks at how museums, galleries, and art histories more broadly, are going through processes of cultural upheaval and how we might find moments of optimism, joy, humour and solidarity through art.

First up in this episode, we’ll be sharing an artist talk from our current exhibition, the way things are, by Tāmaki-based painter brunelle dias. Then we’ll share with you a selection of poems by Nicola Farquhar, as part of our latest publication, Heavy trees, arms and legs.

In this episode, Abby Cunnane speaks with Nina Oberg-Humphries about Fibre Gallery, a Moana artists gallery recently opened in Ōtautahi earlier this year. As well as being the co-founder and director of the Tangata Moana Trust, within which the gallery sits, Nina is an artist and a proud alumni of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies Residency Programme.

First up in this episode, we’ll be sharing an artist talk from our current exhibition, the way things are, by Tāmaki-based painter brunelle dias. Then we’ll share with you a selection of poems by Nicola Farquhar, as part of our latest publication, Heavy trees, arms and legs.

In this episode, we are sharing an artist talk by Anchi Lin. Anchi is a performance and new media artist of Taiwanese Indigenous Atayal and Hō-ló descent based in Taipei. Perhaps she comes from/to___Alang was a Physics Room offsite exhibition that ran between the 23rd of June to the 10th July 2022.

In this episode, we will be sharing the complete audiobook edition of Correspondence Issue 2, bringing the first volume of the paper to its conclusion. This issue includes contributions by Joan Flemming and Terry Craven; Kommi Tamati-Elliffe, Kirsty Dunn, Kāhu Dunn, and Āio Te Uruao Tamati-Elliffe; Shivanjani Lal; and essa may ranapiri.

In this episode, we are sharing our recent Wetland Wānanga exploring ngā taonga mahinga kai. Māia Abraham (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngā Rauru) and Maatakiwi Wakefield (Kāi Tahu whānui, Te Ati Awa, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa and Ngāti Maniapoto) of the Māori Library Services share their knowledge on mahinga kai and the relationship between Ngāi Tahu and the significant wetlands within the Ōtautahi area.

In this episode, we are sharing a panel discussion from our current exhibition Te Whakawhitinga with artist Jeremy Leatinu’u, cinematographer Ian Powell, and film narrators Hunaara Kaa and Poata Alvie McKree.

In this episode, Abby Cunnane talks to Xi Li about their 3D animation work Spirit Ether, which presents a world in which capitalism determines not only the aesthetic of cities, but also permeates a spiritual realm. The work was shown as part of The Physics Room's offsite programme in 2021.

In this episode we share an artist talk with Wai Ching Chan and Tessa Ma'auga about their work in Kāpuia ngā aho 單絲不綫, a collaborative exhibition that explores ancient Chinese narratives in connection with people, materials, and relationships in Aotearoa.

In this episode Abby Cunnane talks to Owen Connors, Laura Duffy, and Aliyah Winter about their work in For the feral splendour, an exhibition of paintings, sculpture, and textiles that engage with ideas about that which is natural, unnatural, supernatural, and the transformative potential of queer narratives that connect these things.

In this episode we are sharing the audiobook of the first issue of our new serial publication Correspondence. This free, biannual serial will publish pairs of audio/text/page-works, which are initiated as a form of correspondence, to recognise the fundamental role of relationships in contemporary publishing and artistic practice, support them, and make them audible. Hear Terry Craven and Joan Fleming, Faith Wilson, Kirsty Dunn and Kommi Tamati-Elliffe, and Shivanjani Lal read their contributions to this first issue.

In this episode, Deborah Rundle and Josephine Jelicich talk to Abby Cunnane about their work in World made of steel, made of stone. They were unable to join us for the artist talk ahead of the opening as they are based in Tāmaki, so we are grateful that we were at least able to meet for a talk about their work over Zoom. Hear them talk about their practises and the process of making each of their works in relation to an exhibition that recognises making as a form of thinking.

Artists Honey Brown, Isabel Wadeson-Lee, and Daegan Wells discuss their work in World made of steel, made of stone. Bringing into the gallery a range of materials—aluminium, parāoa rēwana, digital media, steel, glass, wool, and language—this exhibition recognises making as a form of thinking.

A panel discussion with members of The Veiqia Project, a creative research project inspired by the practice of Fijian female tattooing of veiqia. We were joined by Dr Tarisi Sorovi-Vunidilo, Margaret Aull, Joana Monolagi, and Luisa Tora, the 2021 Creative New Zealand / University of Canterbury Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies Artist in Residence in person and over zoom. 

In this episode, we present a talk with Luisa Tora, a member of The Veiqia Collective and the 2021 CNZ / UC Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies Artist in Residence. Recorded ahead of the opening of their Physics Room exhibition iLakolako ni weniqia: A Veiqia Project exhibition, Luisa speaks more broadly about past The Veiqia Project exhibitions, collaboration, and the joys and challenges of presenting community focused work in contemporary art galleries.

Artist Emily Parr talks to us about her solo exhibition Surfacing.

In this episode, Nicola Farquhar and Sorawit Songsataya discuss their work in our offsite exhibition Heavy trees, arms and legs.

Rachel Shearer talks about her work Te Huri Wai, a seven channel sound installation, and we enter a space of rongo as the winds of Waitaha announce themselves in a special mono mix of the work. Te Huri Wai was made in collaboration with Cathy Livermore for our current exhibition Light enough to read by and tells the whakapapa of the weather here in Waitaha Canterbury according to Kāi Tahu narratives.

A panel discussion on the politics and practicalities of working with clay with Alix Ashworth, Caitlin Clarke, Dave Marshall, and Maia McDonald in response to Bedrock.

In this episode, curator Abby Cunnane and artists Emerita Baik, Maia McDonald, and Nââwié Tutugoro discuss the exhibition Bedrock.

Jamie Hanton and artist Grace Crothall discuss Shelter House.

In Episode 20, we present talks with the artists who created the two collaborative commissions for our exhibitions Monitor 3.0 and 3.1. Min-Young Her and Orissa Keane discuss their moving image installation As you come down and Qianye Lin and Qianhe 'AL' Lin discuss their work Thus the Blast Carried It, Into the World 它便随着爆破, 冲向了世界.

For our first episode 2021, we have another summer listening special, featuring all four contributions HAMSTER Magazine Issue Whitu by Erin Harrington, Eloise Callister-Baker, Spencer Hall, and Nina Oberg Humphries. Issue Whitu, carries on from where Issue Ono left off, asking “Do you believe?”⠀

For our final episode of 2020, we are delighted to share the HAMSTER Ono audiobook! Featuring contributions by Balamohan Shingade, Brian Fuata, Theo Macdonald, Hannah Phillips, Jane Wallace, and Jessica Maclean, HAMSTER Magazine Issue Ono which grew from the question, “Do you believe?”.

In this epsiode, we have a special double feature! First up, we have Nina Oberg Humphries discussing her exhibition TA’AI on until 29 November. Following Nina, we have an audio described tour of TA’AI for blind and low vision audiences by Judith Jones, a Wellington-based audio describer and visitor host at Te Papa Tongarewa. Lasting 13 minutes, it's a description of the key visual elements, which may also interest those of you who haven’t been able to visit the exhibition yet, or, who are interested in hearing audio description in action.

In this episode we share Stones, Site, and Gothic Formations, a tour of The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, hosted by art and architectural historian Laura Dunham who uses Martin Awa Clarke Langdon’s project Kōhatu as a point of departure.

In Episode 15 of Art, Not Science, we are sharing the talk from Martin Awa Clarke Langdon's exhibition Room to breathe: Ka tau hā te mauri, an exhibition comprising three distinct but interwoven collaborative art projects: What’s in a name?, To hold up the sky, and Kōhatu.

In this episode we share the High Street Histories tour, a public programme that accompanies Eddie Clemens’ Kiosk: Directors’ Commentary, an exhibition that explores the history and disappearance of the Kiosk. In this tour you'll learn more about the history and context of galleries around the Kiosk in the High Street area from artists, directors, and curators involved in past and future spaces. Our Access Coordinator Audrey Baldwin, Louise Palmer of High Street Project, Helen Calder of 64zero3, Grant Banbury of Campbell Grant Galleries, Lee Richardson and Liam Krijgsman of Hot Lunch will share insights and origin stories, art historical facts and tidbits, as well as the highs and lows of setting up running and these spaces.

In this episode of Art, Not Science, we share the artist talk with Eddie Clemens from Kiosk: Directors’ Commentary, an exhibition that explores the history and mysterious disappearance of the Kiosk. Tune in to learn more about Eddie’s practice, how the exhibition has been simmering away for over a decade, and the great Ōtākaro Avon river journey.

Daniel Shaskey, Luke Shaw, and Phoebe Hinchliff discuss their work in both Domino Domino and Sympathetic Resonance.

We are joined by graphic designers, artists, and publishers Daniel Shaskey, Katie Kerr, and Matthew Galloway to discuss arts publishing and design during a pandemic.

Artist Luke Shaw joins us to talk about Metal Body: Ghost Field, his sound contribution to our upcoming exhibition Domino Domino. Following the interview with Luke, Metal Body: Ghost Field will be played in full.

In this episode of Art, Not Science, we have two talks from our first exhibition of 2020, The Shouting Valley: Interrogating the Borders Between Us. The first talk is with the curator Lisa Beauchamp on how the exhibition came together, and the second is with one of the artists Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh on his work Pale Blue Dot as well as his practice more broadly.

Episode 8 of Art, Not Science we present an artist talk with Megan Brady and Oliver Perkins on their exhibition Dead Reckoning in early 2019.

In Episode 7 we continue with the second part of the audiobook for HAMSTER Magazine Issue 5. Part 2 features Brooke Stamp with Kayla Marshall and Charlotte Filipov, Robin Murphy, Gemma Banks, and Vanessa Crofskey reading their contributions to HAMSTER 5.

In Episode 6 of Art, Not Science we are proud to present the first part of the audiobook for HAMSTER Magazine Issue 5. Part 1 features Hamish Petersen, Lynley Edmeades, Pūkauri Productions, and Jennifer Katherine Shields reading their contributions to HAMSTER 5.

A reading of responses to our exhibition Two Oceans at Once by FIKA Writers Tusiata Avia, Ana Mulipola, Stephanie Oberg, Siobhan Tumai, Isla Martin, Danielle O’Halloran, and Sarah Maindonald.

Artists Rhea Maheshwari and Kahurangiariki Smith, and curator Charlotte Huddleston discuss their exhibition Two Oceans at Once. 

Tanu Gago and Tapuaki Helu talk about Tanu’s exhibition SAVAGE IN THE GARDEN.

In this episode we present two artist talks, one from our current exhibition A Wandering Thing by Sophie Bannan and Joshua Harris-Harding and one from an exhibition earlier this year The Freedom of the Migrant by Matthew Galloway.

Artist talk with Tuafale Tanoa'i with accompanying music from her exhibition Spontaneous Intentionality.