Episodes
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Chris Melville is a photographer, graphic designer and jazz musician living in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.
In his latest photographic collection, Chris uses household items and a slow shutter speed to create landscape compositions, suggesting dreamy lakes or mountains appearing from the mist. Chris currently works with linen, denim, smooth cotton and coarse hessian, creating visual layers and textures. The resulting images, while being made entirely of practical human-made objects, speak of the mystical natural New Zealand environment, referencing Colin McCahon paintings through their minimal aesthetic.
Chris shares lovely reflections on life and creativity in this episode. We talk about his experiences showing his abstract photographic work at the last 2 Art in the Park events in Auckland, why he also likes to take photographs of musicians, how his sense of humour comes through his art practice and the other things he likes to capture with his camera.
We explore his photographic process, how he comes up with the titles of his latest series and how he juggles a full time design job, being a musician, being a Dad and going to gigs with his photographic fine art career.
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Ross Jones is a painter creating works that evoke a heady sense of nostalgia and elevated playfulness, living in Snells Beach on the east coast north of Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.
Each meticulously devised painting offers hints at various narratives as the artist invites the viewer to engage with his role as storyteller.
I loved meeting Ross and chatting to him. We talk about Ōtaki on the Kapiti Coast of Aotearoa where he grew up and the things he loves about where he now lives at Snells Beach. He shares how he failed his first year studying art and design at Wellington Design School only to return a year later and start the course again, gaining his degree 3 years later.
Ross talks about how he likes to play with time and scale in his work, his love of incorporating toys form his childhood and sourced from around the world into his paintings, how his previous illustration career informs his fine art practice today and his love of using sketchbooks for organising ideas, experimenting and drawing.
We discuss goal setting and how this has evolved into his 100 painting project which started in 2009 and finishes in 2028 and The Final 50 painting project which will start up after that and hopefully take him through to his early 80s. We explore why Ross doesn't like to paint NZ scenes, why he wouldn't enter an art competition, why he likes to paint one painting at a time and only have a solo exhibition every 2 years and why he loves to paint his dog Alice and why he won't paint yours.
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Cathy Carter is a photographic and multimedia conceptual artist, living in Grey Lynn, Auckland.
Cathy's art is inspired by concerns about climate change and our evolving relationship with bodies of water as physical, cultural, and unique environmental ‘landscapes’ and investigates our complex psychological relationship to water through different perspectives and geographical locations.
Cathy and I have a lovely chat which I know you'll enjoy and I just loved our time together. We talk about an influential trip to Europe with her young family that influenced her and informed her early art practice, why she finally went back to uni to study fine arts at AUT University gaining a Master of Art and Design (Hons) in 2013 and why she felt she needed to do this. She shares how she came to make water her muse and how her work became more conceptual, and how she came to be represented by a dealer gallery as soon as she left uni.
We explore her extensive and wonderful series of works from her Oceanids series to her latest Fluid Alchemy series and why she likes to dip in and out of these series. We discuss her creative process, how she makes some of her work, the ideas behind her work and how she likes to also incorporate sculpture, light boxes and collaborative pieces in her shows.
Cathy talks about why she likes to enter art awards and competitions, the success she has had with this and how she approaches submitting her work.
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Jeff Thomson is a sculptor living in the little suburb of Helensville, in the north west of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He is well known for his corrugated iron animals, birds, cars and people as well as NZ icons like the Taihape gumboot and the Holden in our national Museum Te Papa, and is often referred to as the corrugated iron man of Australasia.
Unconventional, humorous, challenging, iconic and ironic, the sculpture of Jeff Thomson has given a whole new perspective to corrugated iron in the New Zealand landscape and in art.
Jeff'swork is keenly sought after by collectors in New Zealand and internationally. He has had major exhibitions in Australia and Germany as well as New Zealand. His work never stands still, and he continues to be recognised as one of NZ's leading and most original contemporary artists today.
After a successful artistic career of over 40 years Jeff has a lot of great stories - from making an elephant fence for James Wallace's home and sleeping rough in a rotunda in Albert Park for 9 days whilst installing iron elephants, to his early long distance walks and meeting the locals, his first corrugated cow made for a letterbox and his love of finding a 'non art' audience. Jeff shares some of these stories in this episode.
He talks about some of the domestic craft processes he has explored with iron such as knitting using downpipes for needles, french knitting, screen printing, weaving, lace making and making pompoms. He shares the ideas and techniques behind some of his artist led community projects, public and private commissions and other sculptures and he talks about some of his favourite works.
We discuss one of his career highlights, which he describes as functional art out in real life, roofing in the community and the beautiful connections he's had with other respected NZ artists such as Don Binney, Paul Dibble, Ralph Hotere and Rosalie Gascoigne.
This is a fascinating glimpse into Jeff Thomson's incredible career.
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Emma Hercus is a painter born in Hastings and now living in Plimmerton, just north of Wellington.
The everchanging ocean and its view from her home serve as constant reference points in Emma's narrative abstract figurative paintings.
I loved talking to Emma. We talk about her early influences and inspiration from family as she was growing up, the amazing basketry and weaving practice she developed when she first decided to get back into being creative after having kids - which after a number of years finally led to her painting practice. We discuss her experience studying art for 3 years part time at the Learning Connection in Taita, Wellington, gaining a diploma in creativity.
Emma shares what she loves about painting, how she incorporates mark making using her favourite scruffy brushes; layering, sanding, scratching to create beautiful marks and glimpses of colour and patterns through the layers.
We explore interesting topics like using chatGPT or AI for writing artist statements (or not), framing, why she sometimes likes to elongate limbs in her paintings, where her stories come from and the symbols in her work.
We talk about her joint show Wildy, coming up this week at Railway Street Gallery + Studios:
An exhibition by painter Emma Hercus and ceramicist Jenn Leov
Wed 23rd October - Saturday 9th November 2024And you'll hear from Emma's doggie Ricky at times making a guest appearance.
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Today I'm catching up with painter, printmaker Kylie Rusk to see what she's been up to since I last spoke to her in March 2021.
Listen to Kylie's first chat on the podcast in episode 2:
https://www.creativematters.co.nz/post/creative-matters-on-air-with-kylie-rusk
You can see her work at her upcoming group show ELEMENTS at Turua Gallery
October 18th - 30th 2024
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Gilly Sheffield is a sculptor | weaver living in both Glendowie in Auckland and Wanaka in the South Island.
After a lifetime of making, it was only a few years ago that Gilly developed a more specific art practice using corrugated iron and started to see herself as an artist.
In this episode Gilly shares how she came upon this very iconic NZ material, corrugated iron, how she sources it (with help from her 'Iron Rescue Collective' friends) and the stories this medium tells for her.
She generously shares a personal traumatic event in her family's life that led to the creation of a whakapapa installation of crosses for her home, which marked the beginning of her art practice. She explains how she came to adding woven line and pattern with thread, and the steps she took to learn to weave.
This chat was motivating for me and got me thinking about all the potential of not only Gilly's work but other ideas that came to me using different materials. I'm sure you'll feel the same! We both get excited about the potential of her work, exploring the possibilities of outdoor sculpture, scale, perspective, use of different threads and public installations.
We also reflect on the pricing of her work, the dreaded imposter syndrome and how she came to exhibit her work in a number of NZ art galleries.
Gilly is celebrating a big year with her first group show, with Kylie Rusk and Claudia Aalderink:
ELEMENTS - Turua Gallery, 18th - 30th October 2024
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Creative visual thinking is fundamental to us all as human beings as we strive to understand our sense of self and the world. Chartwell seeks to deepen understanding about the importance of art and creative thinking for our future and our wellbeing.
The Chartwell Trust was set up in the early 1970s by Robert Gardiner, then a Hamilton businessman and accountant, as a charitable trust to realise Chartwell's vision for wider access to and deeper understanding of creative visual thinking.
The Chartwell Collection was established in 1974 as a privately managed public collection, a new model for its time in New Zealand. From the beginning, all acquisitions went immediately into public gallery care and use.
In this episode I speak to 2 of the Chartwell trust directors Rob Gardiner's daughters Sue and Karen Gardiner, as they celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Chartwell Trust’s involvement with and support of the visual arts in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Karen and Sue share some lovely stories about their early days with their parents Rob and Ev and the man that is Rob Gardiner. We talk about the long 50 year history of Chartwell, how and why Rob started the Chartwell Collection, why the collection eventually came up to Auckland from the Waikato to the Auckland Art Gallery in 1997, why contemporary art makes up the collection and how acquisitions are chosen.
Chartwell's activities and projects are divided into four key domains - Being, Seeing, Making and Thinking. Karen talks about one of the Chartwell outreach projects named Squiggla, which is a cross curricular tool that helps develop creative thinking through the power of mark making https://www.squiggla.org/
Sue takes us through ideas around asking questions in art, how we respond to contemporary art, the affects of viewing art, slow looking and Chartwell's hopes for the next 50 years and she shares the 50th year Chartwell anniversary programme which is running from March 2024 - March 2025.
This is a wonderful conversation which recounts an important part of Aotearoa New Zealand's social and visual art history and celebrates the value of art and the creative process for everyone.
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Levi Hawken is a brutalist | modernist sculptor living and working in west Auckland. His practice includes sculpture in concrete, glass, wood and bronze as well as painting.
As a skateboarder, Levi understands the undeniable attraction of the urban concrete landscape. His work responds to the forms and elements of this environment.
In this very authentic conversation Levi takes us through his extraordinary life from early graffiti days and his world of skating to his appearances on TV and in film and the Nek Minute meme that made him famous, although not necessarily for all the right reasons. He speaks from the heart about experiences in his life that have affected the person he is, the way he works today and the art he makes.
We discuss Levi's early work, how his first show came about and how he built his reputation as a serious artist. We talk about his current work the False Idols series and the Solv series and how his work is inextricably intertwined with skateboarding and urban forms. Levi describes the ideas behind his work and his process for making and how he feels about showcasing his work in a more commercial environment.
This is an amazing story which will inspire young and old, giving you a true insight into the person and artist that is Levi Hawken.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Welcome and Introductions02:34 Childhood Memories and Early Influences
04:11 High School Art Journey
06:10 Discovering Graffiti and Skateboarding
09:10 Pursuing Art and Skateboarding in Melbourne
13:07 Transition to Professional Art and Design
27:08 Life in Dunedin and Artistic Evolution
45:27 The Impact of the 'Neck Minute' Meme
52:37 Freestyling Shapes and Downhill Skateboarding
53:24 Exploring Helmet Designs and Aero Helmets
53:46 Collaborations and Exhibitions
54:35 Landscaping and Concrete Sculptures
55:47 Discovering Brutalism and Smaller Works
56:25 Buffable Show and Permanent Art
57:04 Challenges in the Art World
58:39 Transition to Full-Time Artist
59:19 Experimenting with Glass and Bronze
01:02:10 Architectural Influences and Brutalism
01:05:54 Urban Environment and Skateboarding Influence
01:14:05 Large Scale Projects and Problem Solving
01:23:32 Commercial Success and International Reach
01:31:01 Reflections and Future Aspirations
01:40:56 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Di Tocker is a sculptural glass artist living and working from her purpose built studio in Cambridge, in the Waikato.
Di maintains a structured approach to her art practice and business. She provides work for 5 galleries throughout New Zealand, and undertakes commissions for private residences and commercial projects. Di loves to connect with people who enjoy her glass work and welcomes visitors to her studio by appointment.
In this episode we chat about how Di discovered her love of working with glass and the ideas and narratives her work conveys.
Di very generously shares her complex glass casting process and guides us through her glass casting from design and polishing to managing colour and creating spaces and curves in her work. Di talks about studying glass sculpture in Australia and how that contributed to the artist she is today and why she likes to include figures in her work.
She shares her approach to the business side of being an artist, how she chooses galleries to work with, her love of making notes and keeping journals.
This is such an insightful episode, I learnt so much! Di has an inspiring approach to life as an artist - her journey is fascinating and she has so many great tips for creatives.
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Ronja Schipper has been lovingly making up-cycled art objects since 2015. She lives in the Waitakere Ranges in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.
Ronja uses waste materials for creating design pieces, aiming to highlight the relationship with our at-risk environment & its resources. All pieces are hand made in NZ from discarded bike innertube, cleaned, polished & enhanced with new findings.
Ronja was born in Munich, Germany and is a creative all-rounder with 20 years experience in the publishing, fashion and advertising industry in Europe and NZ with a particular passion for illustration. Since moving to New Zealand in __ she has set up bureau55, her own design studio in West Auckland and in 2015 she started her art practice.
This was such an inspiring chat with a truly formidable woman. Ronja talks about how she uses her art practice to highlight the relationship with our at-risk environment, how she got started with jewellery making using this recycled resource and how her business and art practice has evolved over the last 9 years. She explains her process from sourcing and cleaning the inner tubes to the designing, cutting, painting and packaging stages. Ronja shares how she is starting to use inner tube in different ways with framed artworks designed to be hung on walls and how she is learning to define herself as an artist.
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Mandy Patmore is a multi-media environmental artist living in Karekare, on Auckland’s west coast.
Primarily a painter, Mandy's current work focuses largely on deforestation and habitat loss in New Zealand, and the plight of many endangered native species, whilst exploring themes of colonisation and human impact on our landscape.
I find the work Mandy does in the community, with the environment and her own art practice super inspiring and this is a fantastic episode I know you'll gain many things from. We talk about the Piha domain footbridge project she completed in 2009 which won the NZ Recreation Association Award for most outstanding project and other projects she has done to highlight environmental issues.
Mandy tells us all about the Kōkano Youth Arts Collective which was developed from a pilot programme in 2013 as a response to recognising the needs of some of the most vulnerable young people in West Auckland; all of whom have struggled with mainstream education. She shares the challenges and highlights of working with at risk youth and what she has learnt.
We talk about how Mandy manages all the things in her life and how they all connect, her art practice, her love of using found surfaces and timber to paint on, why she wants to diversify within her art practice, who and what has influenced her practice. We discuss funding, self doubt and how she sometimes feels some form of shame around creating realistic works that may seem more about beautification than the message she is trying to convey.
As this episode goes live Mandy will be listening from her latest residency in Peru, which I'm following with fascination on her socials.
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Born and raised in Auckland, Dita Angeles completed her BFA at Whitecliffe College in 2004 before spending the majority of her career in Asia and more recently Australia.
With a strong background in portraiture - social presentation, perception and persuasion are the dominant themes that run through Dita's work. Her paintings are inspired by existential philosophies and 20th century aesthetics, and depict social issues and personal moments that incorporate the spectacle of contemporary culture, paying close attention to behaviour, ego, identity and anonymity.
We have a fascinating honest chat about the difficulties of moving to other countries and trying to maintain an art practice, creating new contacts and artistic communities and then also the challenges of returning to NZ and again building her community and promoting her work. Dita talks about a traumatic medical event she experienced in Hong Kong which left her disabled and how this has affected her life.
She speaks of her photographic practice, how important composition is for her, how she has to see something to paint it and likes to use her own photography or found images for her work with an emphasis on anonymity and how she sometimes uses herself as a subject but in that case sees herself as a character playing a role.
We talk about her striking upcoming show #Iconograph, which is showing at The Grey Place in Auckland from September 3rd - September 14th 2024. We discuss the symbols in these works such as leather and sunglasses and the icon references she incorporates.
Dita talks in depth about other portraiture series of works - The Post Mod Wallflowers which she showed at the Auckland Art Show in 20, The Gentleman's Club referencing the Me Too movement and her ongoing series Compositions of Identity which are thought provoking cropped images of people at a party in the mid 20th century. We discuss her amazing painting "It's love" of NZ musician Chris Knox which is a finalist in the Adam Portraiture award 2024, and how this came about.
And she shares how people often don't connect her as the artist of her work and how anti-climatic it feels for her when she finishes a painting. And so much more!
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Leigh Tawharu, is a contemporary mixed media and printmaking artist living in Kaeo, Te Tai Tokerau in the far north of Aotearoa NZ.
Her work is created through various techniques and mediums which seek to explore surface texture, pattern and design on paper. She is influenced and inspired by her surrounding landscape of maunga (mountains), native bush, fashion, textiles and still life from within her immediate domestic environment.
This is the best conversation and I absolutely loved meeting Leigh. We initially connected when I inited her to exhibit a work alongside my own thread paintings in a group show I'm involved in with Muriwai Arts Collective. As our conversation went on we found more and more connections between our work and the way we think.
Leigh speaks about the immense pleasure she gains from the object and the cloth, the memories they hold and the cathartic practice of repetitive stitches, which provides a daily early morning exercise in mindfulness. She shares how she finally devoted herself to studying fine art in 2018, how she uses printmaking and painting in her work and how she manages threading on paper.
We discuss her various series of works she has done over the last few years, using thread and different mediums such as shellac, gold leaf, collage and ball point pen, and how they all connect. We have great chats about all sorts of interesting things like nostalgia and how that creeps into our work, sales at shows, imposter syndrome, how we both feel connected to our land and place and how her work responds to the environment around her. Leigh goes into fascinating detail about all the different processes she uses to bring thread into her work.
Once again please excuse my blocked up croaky wheezy voice in this episode.
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Sam Leitch is a contemporary painter and print maker living in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
Sam sees himself as a storyteller of everyday life and the unknown, capturing time and combining commonplace objects and surrealist expressions to invite the viewer in to the painting.
He has always been fascinated with what makes a piece of art. The connection between the viewer, the artist and the piece is a relationship which dominates his ever-evolving art practice.
Sam and I have a great chat, firstly off air about our dogs - my border collie Mali and his Staffy cross Mikey. On air, we talk about his experience studying fine art at university straight from school at the age of 17 and a life changing experience he had at uni that still runs deep with him 16 years later and affects his art practice today. By the age of 24 he was represented by 2 Auckland galleries with a sell out first solo show and marked the beginning of a full time career as an artist. Sam shares why he likes to include birds in his latest work combined with abstract shapes, his painting process including how he uses resin to get a shine for some works and sands it back to create a tile like hardness and flatness, a contrast he enjoys. We discuss his screen printing process and why he loves this medium so much.
Sam is part of a group show Contemporary Creations of Colour at Turua Gallery with Beautifully Frank Frankie meaden and Agate Rubene, Restless & Infectious. This gorgeous show starts tomorrow - Friday August 23rd (with an opening event from 5pm) and runs until September 4th 2024.
https://www.creativematters.co.nz/post/creative-matters-with-sam-leitchNgā mihi nui, thank you Turua Gallery for generously sponsoring this episode.
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GUEST UPDATE: Textile artist Frankie Meaden was last interviewed on the podcast in July 2023 in episode 87.
Today we catch up with her to hear about what she has been up to since then - including a residency, her first solo show, a group show at Turua Gallery coming up and the creation of new works. She was also involved in and a finalist in the Changing Thread’s Contemporary Textile and Fibre art awards 2024 show (which she forgot to mention in our chat!)
Her group show at Turua Gallery with Agate Rubene and Sam Leitch: Contemporary Creations of Colour
August 23rd - September 4th 2024
Opening August 23rd from 5pm.
Listen to Frankie's original conversation in episode 87
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Agate Rubene, aka Restless & Infectious, is an artist and illustrator with a background in fashion and graphic design. She is from Latvia and now lives in Wānaka in the South Island of NZ.
Agate’s work focuses on people and their actions, capturing emotions and feelings. She is inspired by the people around her, human interactions and patterns in nature. Agate loves using bright flat colours to create her own alternative realities, where feminine themes take centre stage.
It was such a pleasure meeting Agate and I found it super inspiring to hear a positive story of someone who has settled in NZ from Eastern Europe and is making her life as an artist here in NZ. Agate talks about how she came to live in New Zealand from Latvia and how both her homeland and her background in fashion influences her work. She shares how successful her initial approaches to galleries were, her first exhibition at Art in the Park art show in Auckland and how her knowledge and experience in graphic design has helped her so much with managing her art practice.
We chat about her illustration work, mostly with breweries, and how that connects and fits in with her fine art practice. Agate reflects on working as an artist in Aotearoa, how she feels she would never have been an artist if she'd stayed in Latvia and how painting brings her calmness and is so good for her well being. https://www.creativematters.co.nz/post/creative-matters-with-agate-rubene
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Jennie De Groot is a contemporary painter living near Hamilton in the Waikato.
Jennie's oil paintings occupy a space where reality, imagination and memory all hold equal tenancy. These psychological landscapes hold the tension between realism and abstraction, place and non-place. Her status as immigrant informs her work, exploring themes of identity and adaptation.
After studying archeology, a career in travel consultancy, moving to New Zealand from South Africa and then contracting a serious infection at the age of 39, amongst many other things, Jennie finally devoted herself to her art practice at the age of 40.
In this awesome episode, Jennie talks about how her landscape paintings reflect more of a feeling, an idea and are often more about self than an actual place. She talks about being in the state of flow and how music contributes to this, how she thinks of herself as a colourist, how she builds her colour palette and how she creates balance in her work. Also the different surfaces she likes to paint on and the mark making tools she loves to use. We talk about her amazing Cold Comfort and her Figures in Space series and how and why these paintings came about.
We talk about what she loves about painting plein air, why she went back to university in her fifties to gain her masters in fine arts and how that has contributed to her art practice and what she gains from her mentor relationship and friendship with fellow NZ artist Di Tocker, who will also be on the podcast later this year. And we touch on so much more!
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Alice Fennessy is an artist based in Palmerston North in the Manawatu. She uses drawing to convey themes such as intimacy, domestic life and interior worlds.
Her work is currently intertwined with motherhood as she raises her two young children, dreams and memories. Alice is endlessly fascinated by the juxtapositions or dualities thrown up by pregnancy and motherhood, how these experiences can be simultaneously beautiful and ugly, tender and excruciating. Her work aims to be sensitive and vulnerable, casting light on experiences of life often disregarded.
I loved talking to Alice. We discuss her secondary art teaching career and how that feeds into her art practice, how her drawing practice developed and how she uses drawing to process what's going on in her head and around her, and sometimes as a place to escape. She shares her love of cyanotypes and the colour blue, how she has introduced stitch and printmaking into her art practice and why she likes to sometimes create her own supports or frames that become an important part of her work.
Alice was a finalist in the Parkin Drawing prize in 2023 and is a finalist again this year in 2024 - we discuss the reasons why she likes to enter this art award, and how scary but great it feels. Another juxtaposition for Alice to be fascinated by.
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Artist Rosanna Raymond aka Sistar S’pacific is in her words an "activator, fabricator" who has achieved international renown for her performances, installations, body adornment, and spoken word.
Rosanna is an innovator of the Pacific art scene and notable producer of and commentator on contemporary Moana culture in Aotearoa New Zealand, the U.K, Canada, Australia and the USA.She is a long-standing member of the art collective the Pacific Sisters and a founding member of the SaVĀge K’lub. Her body centred practice includes working within museums and higher education institutions as a researcher, curator, artist, performer, guest speaker, poet, and workshop leader.
Rosanna's acti.VĀ.tions not only expose and critique the colonialism of traditional Western museum practices of conservation, collecting, and display, but also propose other methods for keeping culture alive, through inherited tradition, personal innovation, and embodiment.
Rosanna has achieved so much in her long career internationally and in Aotearoa. This episode only just touches on her achievements and all the things she has been involved in but you will get a fascinating insight into her life and her art practice. We talk about how and when she came to think of herself as an artist, the stories behind The Pacific Sisters and Sa'vage K'lub, the work she has done in institutions around the world and the changes she has seen over the last 30 years in the Pacific arts community.
https://www.instagram.com/rosannaraymond/Text Mandy - leave your name and email so I can get back to you!
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