Applications, 2016.
Ribbons on Clams, 2016 (1 of 3)
[Acrylic, Reverse Vinyl Graphic Print, LED. 500x500mm]
These 3 works have been created through an application on my phone, allowing arbitrary and impulsive design choices to be formally represented. Ubiquitous features found in applications allow a myriad of contrasting design preferences that currently over-saturate social media and infiltrate ways in which we view online imagery.
Photos previously taken and stored on my phone, or freshly photographed images are combined, which in turn creates a digital narrative captured by myself as the user. This also allows a protagonist role to be present within the work. Apps used to create compositions are chosen, at random, from my tool- box of design applications. This aspect further represents the personal and global immediacy in technology that we have insistently become reliant on.
Investigation into iphone applications as alternative art making tools, material utilization and translations of digital compositions becoming physical objects are three prevalent areas of research informing this final installation.
Currently in Chartwell Trust, Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki, New Zealand.
Applications, 2016.
Ribbons on Clams, 2016 (1 of 3)
[Acrylic, Reverse Vinyl Graphic Print, LED. 500x500mm]
These 3 works have been created through an application on my phone, allowing arbitrary and impulsive design choices to be formally represented. Ubiquitous features found in applications allow a myriad of contrasting design preferences that currently over-saturate social media and infiltrate ways in which we view online imagery.
Photos previously taken and stored on my phone, or freshly photographed images are combined, which in turn creates a digital narrative captured by myself as the user. This also allows a protagonist role to be present within the work. Apps used to create compositions are chosen, at random, from my tool- box of design applications. This aspect further represents the personal and global immediacy in technology that we have insistently become reliant on.
Investigation into iphone applications as alternative art making tools, material utilization and translations of digital compositions becoming physical objects are three prevalent areas of research informing this final installation.
Currently in Chartwell Trust, Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki, New Zealand.
Moving from Aotearoa to New York brought an art history I had long researched from afar into immediate view. Over the years, writing, studio visits, interviews and friendships have drawn me into the living history of New York’s 1980s SoHo art world, while opening conversations with subsequent generations of artists working internationally. I have since had the privilege of writing about and interviewing artists I deeply admire, from David Hockney, Judy Chicago, David Salle, Kim MacConnel, Judy Pfaff, Izhar Patkin, Scooter LaForge, Mickalene Thomas, Kennedy Yanko, Jeffrey Gibson, Tony Oursler, and Cecily Brown, to Jacqueline Fahey, Judy Darragh, John Pule, and Reuben Paterson.
I am interested in what gets remembered, what gets missed, and what can still be recovered through conversations, artworks and time spent in archives. My writing currently moves between three places that have each shaped how I look at painting and sculpture, and how I understand their intersecting histories.
While in Aotearoa, my writing has led me deeper into whakapapa research and the lives of my own tūpuna. I have been fortunate to encounter one of my ancestors, Wiremu Te Manewha (Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Korokī), recorded through a nineteenth-century painting, as well as an extraordinary life mask cast in plaster-of-Paris in 1873, which is now held in the Taonga Māori collection, Te Papa Tongarewa. These encounters have deepened my understanding of my Indigenous connection to Aotearoa, and changed the way I think about movement, inheritance, representation, and the histories we carry with us. I also contribute to publications including Contemporary HUM, Art News Aotearoa, and Art New Zealand.
While in Europe, I direct and lead the writing of Painting Diary, an independent, Vienna-based publication, curatorial platform, and residency programme developed in collaboration with painter (and fellow New Zealander), Andre Hemer. My work extends across artist interviews, studio visits, exhibitions and residencies, as well as reporting from the Venice Biennale.
With Izhar Patkin & Nam Jun Paik in New York. Photo by Yi Hsuan Lai
While in New York, I regularly contribute to publications including Artsy, Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail, Two Coats of Paint, Whitehot Magazine, Eazel, Impulse Magazine, Artefuse and Widewalls. My reporting has taken me across the United States, to Magazzino (Upstate, NY), Parrish Museum and Pollock-Krasner Foundation (Hamptons), the Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Connecticut), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Museum of Contemporary Art (Massachusetts), The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum (Maryland), Johnson Lowe Gallery (Atlanta), Museum of African American Culture (Houston), Museum of Modern Art (Honolulu), Untitled Art Fair (Miami), The Broad (Los Angeles), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington D.C), Savannah College of Arts and Design (Georgia), and Palm Springs Art Museum (California).
Alongside journalism, I work with artists, galleries, and non-profit cultural organisations on writing, editorial/catalogue development, and curatorial pursuits with a particular commitment to immigrant, Indigenous, and historically overlooked artists.
Art history is continually being revised, and I care deeply about who enters its record, whose work receives sustained critical attention, and whose stories deserve to be brought into renewed view.
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