Dance, Dance is artist Kate van Der Drift's current exhibition on now at Sanderson Gallery.
It showcases the artist's time spent at the Waitawa Regional Park, where she was the 2024 Auckland Council artist in residence. During her residency, Kate delved into a new experimental method of cameraless photography. These new methods of Lumen exposures are created by using invasive introduced species from the Waitawa Regional Park and using the specific herbicide that is used to kill that plant.
In a coming together of alchemical entities and experimentation, Kate lands on these beautiful moments of magic—breathtaking images that dance between worlds.
Maya had a chat with Kate about her practice and current exhibition.
Life in Forms is a survey exhibition of Pauline Kahurangi Yearbury’s practice, currently showing at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery. It is the first solo exhibition of Yearbury’s work in a public art gallery.
Yearbury is considered a leading practitioner in Māori modernist art and was one of the first Māori artists to introduce Māori mythology into contemporary art. Her work is characterised by a bold and illustrative style, of which she is most renowned for her incised wooden panels featuring figures from Māori whakapapa narratives.
She was one of the first Māori women to attend the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, where she worked later as a tutor too.
Sofia had a kōrero with curator Hester Rowan about Yearbury’s life, practice, and legacy as well as Hester’s curatorial process for putting together Life in Forms
Dominic Hoey is a poet, author and youth worker from Tāmaki Makaurau.
1985 is Dominic’s highly anticipated third novel. Set in pre-gentrified Auckland, it follows the story of Obi, who faces impending teenagehood after a childhood marked by poverty, dysfunctional family dynamics, (dis)organised crime and violence.
Beth caught up with Dominic about the writing of 1985.
Selected works by Judy Millar and Kate Newby are currently showing at Michael Lett Gallery.
Judy Millar is an internationally acclaimed artist. Her work is intensely physical, working with processes of erasure, wiping or scraping paint off the surface of the work and contrasting choices of colour to create a tension between the background and foreground. Taking up space, works by Millar are often large-scale, engaging with the body and her work in a space.
Kate Newby is a visual artist from Tāmaki Makaurau who lives and works in Floresville, Texas. Her work engages with a wide range of situations using every-day actions and materials in order to displace and challenge how contemporary art is exhibited, viewed, and archived. She manipulates, fires, and arranges elements from the natural world and built environment, creating site-responsive installations, often with projects drawing directly from the locations in which they are exhibited and the sites she works in.
Sofia caught up with both Judy and Kate about their practices in light of the show.
Ruin on the Cascade is Ayesha Green’s (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga, Kāi Tahu, Pākehā) first solo exhibition with Season Aotearoa.
The title refers to a faux ruin in Stowe Gardens, a Georgian landscape garden in Buckinghamshire established in the early 18th century by British army officer and Whig politician Richard Temple, the 1st Viscount Cobham. Using the Stowe Gardens as a framework, Green explores a range of subjects, including class, land use, knowledge systems, ethics, national identity, and British imperialism through her painting and sculptural practice.
Sofia had a kōrero with Ayesha about Ruin on the Cascade, her research and thinking behind the works, and her practice as a whole
e kō, nō hea koe is the debut poetry collection by award-winning slam poet and filmmaker Matariki Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Hinerangi).
Published by Dead Bird Books, e kō, nō hea koe is “a series of goodbyes and attempts to slow the shedding, it's a group of teenagers sparking up as they watch the great pacific garbage patch catapult into space and become a second moon, it's endless conversations with Grandmama about stars, it is the constant rebirth of whakapapa and learning that silence isn’t the best part of her.”
Sofia caught up with Matariki about the themes of this body of work and how it came to fruition.
Sofia had a kōrero with Matariki Bennett about her debut poetry collection, e kō, nō hea koe, out now via Dead Bird Books
She also caught up w Kaitohu Director of Artspace Aotearoa, Ruth Buchanan, about their latest exhibition, Intimation of Endless Space Given in a Small Window of Time (approximately 10 minutes) by Lina Grumm and Ethan Braun.
And Beth had a kōrero with Ruby Macomber about Streetside, Auckland Writer’s Festival’s annual fringe event.
And for Stage Direction this week, Alice Canton joined Sofia in the studio to chat with Evie Orpe and Becky Umbers about Comedy Fest.
Florence Hartigan and Shoshana McCallum chat to Alice Canton about their shows, Me, My Mother and Suzy Cato and Merely Beloved! on at the Herald Theatre from 8-10 May.
Mayen Mehta and Ryan O'Kane from Auckland Theatre Company joined Sofia in the studio to chat about Murder on the Orient Express, on at ASB Waterfront Theatre 22 April - 10 May.
John Davies joined Sofia and Beth in studio to chat about Te Tupua - The Goblin, a solo play written and performed by Davies himself. Tickets for tonight's show at Te Pou Theatre here.
Ahi Karunaharan joined Beth and Sofia in the studio to talk about a mixtape for maladies, the final chapter of Karunaharan's trilogy. The play tells the story of 17 nostalgic pop tracks which chart the deeply moving journey of Sangeetha and her family in 1950s Sri Lanka. a mixtape for maladies is on at ASB Waterfront Theatre from the 4th March. You can get your tickets here.
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