On Saturday 28 September, the Wellington suburb of Newtown is transformed into a pop-up gallery, with an exhibition of 31 artist videos taking place in shops, cultural halls and businesses.
Presented by CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand with the support of Creative New Zealand, Home Movies features 31 artworks programmed to reveal the rich cultural diversity of Newtown’s past, present and future. Starting at 10am and running until 4pm, visitors and locals will be invited to pick up a map and navigate their way to spaces as diverse as TechnoFix mobile phone repairs, Good Boy Sandwiches and the Newtown Library, where they will see video works on a loop, addressing topics as varied as South Pacific migration, male pattern baldness and a proposal for a Newtown water feature.
Curated by CIRCUIT Director Mark Williams with assistance from Laura Duffy, each work is made by an artist living or working in Newtown either now or historically (revealing Newtown as a site for artist production) or is programmed to reflect the unique cultural history of Newtown.
Home Movies is presented as part of AURA Festival of Artist Moving Images, a new annual festival programmed by Newtown-based arts agency CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand. AURA takes place over seven days in Newtown, with various performances, screenings and events addressing the broader concept of "home." Says AURA director Mark Williams, “Newtown is a great place to live and has been home to CIRCUIT for seven years now. It is also a suburb that is undergoing cultural shifts due to rising housing costs. This project is an acknowledgement of Newtown’s diverse communities, and an opportunity to consider Newtown’s future.”
As part of Home Movies AURA has commissioned three new performance works from student artists, each of whom has been asked to respond to Newtown as material. Williams says, “It was important that Home Movies addressed Newtown’s future; students have a big stake in that.”
At the conclusion of the show CIRCUIT will gift a newly formed collection of artists video to the Newtown Community Centre and Newtown Library where it will reside as The Newtown Artists Film and Video Study Collection. In doing so, artists work will enter the historical and cultural lexicon of Newtown alongside already identified and acknowledged communities.
Featuring works by
Gabrielle Amodeo, Arapeta Ashton, Lucy Aukafolau, Denise Batchelor, Louisa Beatty, Anna Briner, MD Brown, Wai Ching Chan, Madeline Cheng, Laura Duffy, Max Fleury, Bryce Galloway, Nathaniel Gordon-Stables, Sam Hamilton, Chevron Hassett, Mike Heynes, Caroline Johnston, Lara Lindsay-Parker, Raewyn Martyn, Pippy McClenaghan, Louie Neale, Elisabeth Pointon, Christina Read, Emiko Sheehan, Erika Sklenars, Terry Urbahn, Peter Wareing, and Aliyah Winter.
