Various Artists with Sofia & Maya

Shannon Conacher is a South African, Tāmaki based artist. Working amongst a variety of mediums with a central focus on moving image and video.

Her current exhibition, The Archive Room, showing at RM navigates RM's own archive and archive room. Bringing into focus a space that might be typically overlooked. An archive of ephemera that dates back to the artist-run space’s opening in 1997, with many of the artworks within the archive being largely unknown of its maker.

Within the archive room Conacher approaches the archive as a living, breathing site. Re-positioning the archive into an active site of touch and encounter. Through a process of material dialogue between Conacher and the archived art works. working with a light touch to preserve the works agency, but enough to bring them forth into a space of active dialogue.

Maya had chat with Shannon Conacher about her practice and current show The Archive Room. 

Untold Intimacies: a History of Sex Work in Aotearoa, 1978-2008 is a new book written by historian of sex, gender, and health, Cheryl Ware, published by Auckland University Press. 

In June 2003, New Zealand became the first country to decriminalise sex work.

Through the lived experiences of 25 individuals, the book is an account of the stories of sex workers in Aotearoa and the industry’s transformation over this critical 30 year period. 

Drawing on new and archival interviews, Ware tells their stories through an in-depth historical investigation from the regulation of brothels with the Massage Parlours Act of 1978, through the struggle for decriminalisation to the legally mandated national review of the law in 2008.

Sofia had a kōrero with author Cheryl Ware about the importance of this body of research, writing the book, and her reflections now.

Tess Walker Elliot is a Tāmaki Makaurau based artist, working amongst analogue photography processes. Her Practice is Centered around engaging with the archive, working across both personal and national archives.

Within Her Current show at Window Gallery, On being Imaged, Walker Elliot draws on her own personal medical archives. Engaging with x-rays and Ultrasounds to examine the depersonalization of the medical image and environment.

Pulling the x-rays back into a place of dark room photography process, using the x-rays as photo negatives that walker elliot then layers with external images of her own body.

Attempting to bring these medical images back into a place of the body, of the personal. Resulting in a series of images that wrestle with the dissolving of the external image into their own abstraction through the internal image 

Maya had a kōrero with Tess walker Elliot about the show and overall practice

Murmuration is a solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Li Si Rong. 

Within Murmuration Li Si Rong presents a body of work that hovers between the everyday and an imagined dream-like space, navigating humanity's relationship with the home, and the things inside them.

Her paintings Sing with sweeping colours and dance amongst familiar forms while pulling the viewer into a world of the paintings themselves; that of a feeling of home and into a space of community. 

Mobile like structures hang alongside the paintings, playing a careful balancing act like that of the movements of starlings, Murmuration.  Li Si Rong uses Murmuration as a metaphor for community, shifting the gallery space into a place of murmuration itself, bringing us together into a space of warmth when we need it most.

Maya had a chat with Li Si Rong about Murmuration, as well as her overall practice .