Art — In Between Review by Jane Wallace
This week there are some gallery doors closing, and others opening. It is hard to arrange thoughts when you’re in between, so here are some magnetic events and exhibitions to fill in these spaces.
Hardening at Enjoy Public Art Gallery, until 10 March, free entry Aliyah Winter stands in a white garment, in an echoing landscape. It feels echoing, but there is no audio to tell. Her solo exhibition revisits the history of Dr. Hjelmar von Danneville, and the implication of Miramar and Matiu Island in this history, considering representations of gender and sexuality.
The Language of Things: Meaning and Value in Contemporary Jewellery at The Dowse, till 24 June, free entry The objects that we adorn ourselves with, that we protect ourselves with, are so intimately entangled with our body. These are things that can be simultaneously precious and worthless, that are sometimes not even a whole object when severed from us. Yuka Oyama is part of this show, whose work explores the temporary homes that objects can provide for us, especially in lives that are never of any static location.
Teju Cole: Blind Spot, in conversation with Paula Morris at Circa, 10 March, $19 + booking fee (from New Zealand Festival website) Teju Cole is a writer, photographer, and art historian, and he synthesises these things in his book Blind Spot. In every image, Blind Spot makes an object out of the gap from one thing to the next. The images are sparse, fugitive, but the absence of definite subject makes it more present by proxy. His accompanying text is a drill bit in your brain; persistent, steely silver sharp, and brilliant.
He Tohu at National Library Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, permanent exhibition, free entry Here are three important documents together: He Whakaputanga, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the Women’s Suffrage Petition, in an exhibition rich in content and design. He Tohu offers an opportunity to understand the consequences of each of these papers, and reflect and challenge our own relationships to them.
Luke Willis Thompson at Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, till 15 April, free entry Kathy Noble wrote of Luke Willis Thompson’s work that “art of this nature can be easy to celebrate and easy to criticise”. This “nature” is very loud, and also very stealthy. Thompson has occupied the gallery with three large-scale video works that ask a lot more questions than they answer, seeking some sort of “form for political silence”. This is a silence that is, perhaps, the most deafening.
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