Search results for 'Historical society'

In 2023, artists Charlie Thomas, Rose Lasham, Peregrin Hyde and Tegan Allpress travelled to South Georgia, an island in the Atlantic Ocean.

I had a kōrero with two of the artists who embarked on the expedition: Peregrin Hyde and Tegan Allpress. They created art there – or upon their return – based on their interpretations of the remote island. This art will be part of the exhibition Into Ocean & Ice, opening next week at the New Zealand Maritime Museum.

Hyde is a multidisciplinary artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. His practice, which combines art and science, responds to the alarming rates of Antarctic ice melt, which reached historic lows in 2023. Tegan Allpress (Ngāti Whakaue, Rongowhakaata) is a film photographer focused on the concept of tūrangawaewae.

Into Ocean & Ice opens at the New Zealand Maritime Museum on November 29th.

The Oshima Gang is an exhibition by Theo Macdonald, currently showing at RM Gallery. 

Macdonald is a Tāmaki-based interdisciplinary artist with a focus on still and moving documentary photography and cinematography to explore his interest in public expressions of militarism, national identity, and collective and personal memories. 

As an experimental documentary, The Oshima Gang sees Macdonald revisiting five colonial institutions in Tāmaki Makaurau that were featured in Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Ōshima’s ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence’, which came out in 1983. 

Using Fūkeiron, or Landscape Theory, as a mode of cinematic communication – layering Super 8 film with archival text and raw production audio – Macdonald uses these sites of colonial architecture to invite viewers to consider and critique our identity in Tāmaki Makaurau, placing historical ideas, documents, and international relationships in dialogue with our present. 

Sof had a kōrero with Theo Macdonald about The Oshima Gang and these thematic interests that underpin his practice. 

After the undercurrents is a new exhibition bringing together the work of two senior painters, Australian artist Gordon Bennett and Tāmaki-based Emily Karaka, opening tonight at Artspace Aotearoa. 

Gordon Bennett was a Brisbane-based artist who is widely recognised as one of Australia’s most significant and critically engaged contemporary practitioners. His practice moved between these different phases – from often more abstract forms, to his conscious appropriation of Basquiat to create these cross-cultural dialogues, to the work made under the name of ‘John Citizen’ as a means to question identity and politics of categorisation in Australian art – seeking to map alternative histories and question the status quo through these various forms. 

His work has been paired with Tāmaki-based painter Emily Karaka whose practice draws on the personal and political through these diverse art making traditions, vibrant colours, and historical narratives that guide her. Grounded in the cultural and political landscape of Aotearoa, her work articulates emotional intensity and her unique perspective, speaking to her long-standing advocacy for kaitiakitanga and mana motuhake. 

In After the undercurrents, with both artists drawing on their respective narratives of place and indigenous worldviews, the pairing allows the viewer to contemplate Artspace Aotearoa’s annual question for 2026: ‘Which history?’

Sof had a kōrero with Kaitohu Director of Artspace Aotearoa, Ruth Buchanan, about the show and Gordon Bennett and Emily Karaka’s respective practices.

Lachlan spoke with Children's Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft about his recent address to Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa (New Zealand Māori Law Society) Conference regarding the Oranga Tamariki Act.