What role does art play in social practice? When is it necessary to make an artwork and when to take direct action?
Join CIRCUIT director Mark Williams for a discussion with artists Dieneke Jansen and Heleyni Pratley. Together, they will discuss Jansen's film This Housing Thing (2021), Pratley's painting and music work, and the artists' strategies for using art to investigate the mechanics of capital and as a tool for social justice.
Dieneke Jansen is an artist based Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland who works with lens-based documentary and social practice. Jansen's practice engages with tensions between site-responsive interventions, performative actions and lens-based documentary practices, and works with community to productively challenge inequality. Projects such as Dwelling on the Stoep, Jakarta Biennale, 2015, and Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery (then St Paul St Gallery), Tāmaki Makaurau, 2016; working with the Tāmaki Housing Group on the exhibitions G.I. Areas A & B, 2015, and 90 DAYS+, 2018, Te Tuhi, Pakuranga, and Backdoor Doorbell Studio, Artspace Aotearoa, Tāmaki Makaurau, 2022, inform her current work, which focuses on the social dimensions of lens-based practice with inner-city residents in Tāmaki Makuarau.
Heleyni Pratley is a Pōneke-based Aotearoa/Greek/Cypriot conceptual artist working in video, drawing, painting, sculpture, and performance. The core concepts of her work question the mechanics of capitalism and how it shapes and determines what we value. In addition to her art practice, Pratley campaigns for social change, having worked as a union organiser for fast food and Zero Hour contract workers. She is currently active in local housing and climate change movements. Heleyni and her sister Marika Pratley were the recipients of the inaugural Pyramid Club and Museums Wellington Thomas King Observatory Sound Residency in 2021. Projects include A Work About The Housing Crisis With An Indoor Outdoor Flow (2022), presented with support from Urban Dream Brokerage and Letting Space. She is a founding member of the Eye Gum music collective, curating and producing the Great Sounds Great and Welcome To Nowhere music festivals.
