Louise Tu'u: Performing the Margins: An Anthem of Hope

Please join us to celebrate the launch of Louise Tu'u's Performing the Margins: An Anthem of Hope on Friday 15 September from 5.30pm. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and Louise will give a talk about the publication at 6pm.

The gallery will be open until 8pm for the launch so come along and see our current exhibition, Share / Cheat / Unite. 

Performing the Margins: An Anthem of Hope, written by Louise Tu’u and designed by Amy Yalland at INDEX, discusses the performance, "An Anthem of Hope" that Tu’u made at the Physics Room in Christchurch, New Zealand in October 2013. This publication is made possible with the generous support of the Chartwell Trust.

Woven through the book are four Samoan concepts; fa'alavelave (trouble), fiapoto (‘smart alec’), fa'amatala or matala (to open/explain) and faitatala (to gossip). Performing the Margins mobilises these concepts as it explores misfires of “An Anthem of Hope”, Pacific bodies, personal ambition, and the artist’s relation to the gallery management and board of trustees.

“Louise Tu’u deftly weaves image, text,process and reflexive performance into a compelling and deliberately partial montage of artistic hope from the margins.“

- Katerina Teaiwa, Associate Professor College of Asia and the Pacific Australian National University

“By foregrounding relational ways of being against the more formal rituals of the academy, Tu’u suggests that institutions are personal entities with myriad voices that are capable of, and responsible for, enacting a determined vocal agency.”

- Jamie Hanton Director, The Physics Room

“After reading the book I wish I was there to enjoy the spectacle, but then again, a spectacle is only ever the after image of fa’alavelave since it is the moment that one realises that debt and exchange is a neverending cycle in the play of expectations.”

- Albert L Refiti, Senior Lecturer, Spatial Design Auckland University of Technology