Writing & PodcastNgā Putanga Kōrero

Gloriana Meyers considers the myriad ways that our home shapes our identity in Toloa Tales, an exhibition of two new works by Edith Amituanai and Sione Tuívailala Monū that explore what it means to return to an ancestral homeland.

CIRCUIT'S Kaitiaki Kiriata, artist, and curator Tanya Te Miringa Te Rorarangi Ruka navigates oceanic storylines in the work of Vailahi Vailahi.

Robyn Maree Pickens unpicks the archival impulse in Radicant, an exhibition by artists Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux at the Hocken Gallery.

Balamohan Shingade follows Yana Dombrowsky-M’Baye between two archipelagos with the same name, tracing her attempts to find the signare, a figure entangled within the complex inheritances of French colonialism in Senegal.

"If I didn't laugh, I'd cry." — a conversation between Joe Jowitt and Sean Grattan, the first episode of the CIRCUIT Cast series Comic Release.

Nat Tozer's A Sapling to Tie (2025) draws Rosa Cachemaille into its verdant imagining of the possibilities and pleasures of an Aotearoa childhood, in the final Masons Screen Summer Writing Commission for 2025.

Kat Rowan reflects on performance, community, and belonging in Wesley John Fourie's Mason's Ballad (2024), in the second of the Masons Screen Summer Writing Commissions for 2025.

Matthew Whiteman mines chance and the unconscious in Claus Lucas' Three Studies (2024), in the first of the Masons Screen Summer Writing Commissions for 2025.

Thomasin Sleigh stitches material, memory, and meaning in Interlaced: Animation and Textiles at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.

In the first of three essays, CIRCUIT'S Kaitiaki Kiriata, artist and curator Tanya Te Miringa Te Rorarangi Ruka explores the guiding mātauranga of Rematriation, a programme of moving image works by contemporary Māori artists.

Curator Abby Cunnane reflects on understandings of home, shelter, and belonging through the works in the international touring exhibition Homing Instinct.

Jane Wallace excavates layers of meaning in the aural and visual registers of the six artists' films shown in the 2024 play_station Film Festival.

Samuel Te Kani considers existentialism and affect in the work of sculptor and performance artist Peter Roche, viewed through the lens of Night Piece, a new documentary by Bridget Sutherland.

Hana Pera Aoake explores the poetic and generative role of whakapapa—a means of creating layers—in Emily Parr's Through the time spiral: ʻOli ʻUla (2021).

"There is a vitality that is held in the earth" — a kōrero between artist Nat Tozer and CIRCUIT director Mark Williams on the occasion of the Aotearoa premiere of Erotic Geologies, Tozer's most complex work to date.

Artists Dieneke Jansen and Heleyni Pratley discuss using art as a tool for social justice, moderated by Mark Williams and presented at Enjoy Contemporary Art Space in association with the exhibition Homing Instinct. 

"I see the environment as a creative partner" — a kōrero between Emma Hislop (Kāi Tahu) and Tia Barrett (Waitaha, Ngāti Māmoe, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Tamainupō, Ngāti Maniapoto), the third and final episode of the CIRCUIT Cast series Hihi Aho.

Kirsty Baker considers creation, expansion, and the contingencies of mystic Hildegard Von Bingen's Lingua Ignota in Sriwhana Spong's a hook but no fish (2017).

"Whanaungatanga is this gift we have as Māori to connect and to relate" — a kōrero between Emma Hislop (Kāi Tahu) and Sandy Wakefield (Ngapuhi, Ngāi Tahu), the second episode of the CIRCUIT Cast series Hihi Aho.

Bronwyn Holloway-Smith responds to the 2024 Masons Screen commissions and considers the potential contribution of public art to contemporary political discourse.