Exhibition reviewsArotakenga

"In here, space is soft. Like blocking a lightbulb with your fingers, the walls betray an illuminated, epidermal glow." — Alena Kavka discusses Who can think, what can think at Te Tuhi

Hamish Win writes on James Oram's recent exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, By Spectral Hands.

In the colonial grandeur of Pah Homestead, Xi Li's Brain Island simulates a pulsating futuristic fantasy

Connie Brown writes on Sam Hamilton's installation at Artspace Aotearoa, Te Moana Meridian (2022)

Māori Moving Image ki Te Puna o Waiwhetū, the latest chapter in the Māori Moving Image exhibition series, is sensitive to the mauri of materials and place.

Dangerous dating, ESP, and community video: a quick-fire round up of moving image activity around Auckland's galleries.

Alicia Frankovich’s Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies at the Christchurch Art Gallery picks apart the desire to categorise, classify, and impose order on the natural world.

Louie Zalk-Neale, Gabriel White, and Jamie Berry showed new work on Masons Screen in Wellington's CBD while people protested against the vaccine mandates, and Aotearoa tipped in and out of lockdowns.

The colonial villa and its attendant myths of empire are collapsed by George Watson in her exhibition of new video and sculpture at Te Uru, Kōtiro, Emepaea.

Kai Tāhu collaborate with the Dunedin Public Art Gallery on three exhibitions Hurahia Ana Kā Whetu: Unveiling the Stars, He Reka Te Kūmara, and Paemanu: Tauraka Toi—A Landing Place, in "one epic and epochal mahi toi responding to mana whenua".

Samuel Te Kani reviews Artspace Aotearoa's annual new artists show, CRUEL OPTIMISM.

The exhibition Pōkai Whenua, Pōkai Moana at the Hocken Gallery showed new lens-based work created during Bridget Reweti's time as the Frances Hodgkins Fellow in Ōtepoti.

Emma Ng spends some screen time at Image Processors: Artists in the Medium – A Short History 1968–2020 at the Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi.

"Simnett’s survival strategy is to examine trauma's cooled, black, liquid residue, morphing the after-image into something new and darkly inhabited." Mark Williams visits Marianna Simnett's exhibition at City Gallery Wellington.

Presenting works by three contemporary artists from Aotearoa, Hong Kong and Turkey/USA, happiness is only real when shared addresses the current moment by imagining alternative realities, both absurd and frighteningly prophetic in scope.

Have Uber, will travel. A recent 24 hour sojourn in Tāmaki Makaurau presents an opportunity for whistle stop impressions of shows by Natasha Matila-Smith, Steve Carr & Christian Lamont, Shannon Te Ao, Ana Iti, and Toi Tū Toi Ora.

Walking from pre-European city pā sites to Masons Screen, Mark Amery considers three new public art commissions by Layne Waerea, Annie Bradley and Theo MacDonald, addressing uninvited visitors, bodily architecture and digital confessions.

Jackson reinterprets the monolith as a form of abstract cinema.

"Gone is the pastiche and irony inherent to much postmodern New Zealand art of the 90’s... This has been replaced by art that allows elements of hope, sincerity and emotion to sit alongside the cynicism and rationality of more traditional forms of critique."

A review of Fiona Amundsen and Tim Corballis's exhibition Human Hand.