Eight thousand layers of moments at Gus Fisher Gallery, 15 March -11 May, 2024

Roma Anderson, Katrina Beekuis, Matthew Cowan, Paul Cullen, Mikols Gaál, Matthew Galloway, Henna-Riika Halonen, Sean Kerr, Yukari Kaihori, Louise Menzies, Ilya Orlov, Mirimari Väyrynen, and Denise Ziegler.

These artists are Doctoral students and alumni from the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, and Elam School of Fine Arts at Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland.

This collaborative exhibition considered luck from their varied perspectives. “Spanning multiple geographies and cultural positions, the artworks touch on aspects of chance, unpredictability, agency and control, and explore how these operate within artistic production. By asking the viewer to consider different interpretations of luck, the exhibition attempts to complicate an understanding of how luck intersects with place, privilege, history and language.”

(Gus Fisher Gallery exhibition text).

When I encounter a group show like this I view the works, read the literature, then take some photos. When I look at the photos later I’m always interested in what I’ve decided to take photos of, and as always I seem to be drawn to layering, holes, transparency, angles, light, shadows, extraction, and compression. The thematic links between the works hum quietly beneath the formal qualities that shout at me and pull me in to extend my encounter with the work.

Ilya Orlov, Avos Machina ll, 2024, found materials, clamp.

Mirimari Väyrynen, Evil Eye, 2024, oil painting on wooden board, reflective strip

and tape, metal holder, fan and LED light.

Matthew Galloway, Tuesday (detail), 2024, Archives New Zealand cardboard

boxes, carbon copy facsimile, 1975 Mkll ford Cortina windshield, vinyl sticker sheet.

Yukari Kaihori, Title work from two sides of the moon (detail), 2024, aquarium, plant-based plastic, black sand, water, floor tiles, weeds collected from outside Gus Fisher Gallery.

Luke Willis Thompson, Mouvement des Malades, at Michael Lett Gallery in collaboration with Coastal Signs, 12 April - 18 May, 2024.

Luke Willis Thompson, Mouvement des Malades, 2024, exhibition view, Michael Lett Gallery, 3 East St.

A three channel video of a mural in the Church of the Black Christ, Church of St Francis Xavier, Ra Province, in northern Vitu Levu, Fiji. The film was taken over a day and compressed into 7 hours, with full length audio played on speakers situated around the space. The dimensions of the East St space, which was a church in its former life, almost exactly match those of the church in Fiji. This church is in a part of Fiji that has fallen victim to cyclones that continue to worsen with the climate crisis, perpetrated and accelerated by the inaction of the Western world. The mural reveals issues of race, colonisation, and inequity prevalent throughout Fiji's history and present day.

Despite the openness of the space there was something oppressive about this work. At times the audio of rain on a tin roof, and screeching mynah birds was too much, and the slow, infinitesimal changes to the image kept you in thrall to it, captured in time with the image, waiting for something to happen.

Celine Frampton and Gitanjali Bhatt, in a substation somewhere, at Demo, 17 - 20 April, 2024.

Celine Frampton and Gitanjali Bhatt, in a substation somewhere, 2024, installation view, Demo.

"Here things gather in some kind of communion. Abstracted and less than complete. Once banked, they now appear displaced, hovering at an intermediary stop." (from the exhibition text).

Celine Frampton, parts to mass, created 2021, reformed 2024, MDF and acrylic.

This piece probably best sums up the relationship of Celine's work to my own. The idea of being 'less than complete' feeds into my own investigation into working in sketch mode to the point of 'finished for now'. This piece is fitted together with slots and therefore holds the potential to be re-configured. I like that she's included that in the description of the work in the catalogue.

I was also interested in the use of blue-screen blue for these works. Once Celine told us what that particular shade of blue was, it really opened up the work for me. I guess having worked a lot with blue screen in my job, I know all too well its ability to erase, alter, or absorb anything that's blue that's positioned in front of it in a digital realm. As Celine puts it, "exploring the lines between what is and what could be. Objects, thoughts, and sensations coalesce in a dance of transformation and uncertainty, through which their meanings shift and morph."