WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to Fiona Amundsen. Fiona is a New Zealand photographer making work that is influenced by her background in social anthropology. A firm interest in the Asia Pacific region Fiona explores sites of trauma, memorialisation and documentary. Read more for what would Fiona do? I remember you started off 2014 with a residency in Japan at Tokyo Wonder Site, how was it? The residency was incredible because it was very structured but also completely open. When I say structured I mean that you had to apply with a project that related to or reflected on Tokyo in some way.  Once in Tokyo, each person got assigned with a ‘minder’ (mine was called Miwa san) who helped set up meetings that were appropriate to your work.  As a result I met some amazing curators from major museums, which would be hard to achieve on my own.  The residency really looked after me, and Miwa san was really …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to Lisa Reihana. Lisa is one of New Zealand’s senior practitioners whose work has been a pioneering force in the challenging of prescribed Māori aesthetics. Her multi-disciplinary approach to art making creates sophisticated multiplicities. The much anticipated in Pursuit of Venus (infected) recently had it’s world premier at The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, receiving much critical acclaim and situating itself as a landmark work for New Zealand contemporary art. Read more for what would Lisa do? In a way, your practice emerged on that 2nd wave of Māori contemporary art, at the time you were ’young guns’. Has that generational gap been something that you’ve ever been conscious of? Yes I was aware of the generational gap, the importance of being active in your own time, as well as knowing what came before. You should be aware of your context and history. I went through Elam Art …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to Samantha McKegg. Samantha is a writer, reviewer and critic based in Dunedin. Samantha has a column in the Otago Daily Times as well as doing freelance writing for various galleries and publications. Read more for what would Samantha do? Some people might say that being Dunedin based would limit your ability to comment on New Zealand’s sometimes Auckland Centric arts landscape. How do you find it? I think that statement could be true of someone who lived in Auckland – I mean someone in South Auckland might have a very different view of the NZ art scene versus someone base in the CBD. But yes, I probably do have a skewed view from down here; it is always tempting to remain short-sighted. The NZ art scene, however, is pretty well networked and it can be easy to keep yourself in the loop with just a little bit of …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to Jahra Rager. Jahra is a poet, choreographer and dancer based in Auckland. She’s just come out of the first season of MOTHER/JAW which she choreographed and has received a great amount critical acclaim. As well as that she teaches dance under Ia Manuia and performs in internationally reknowed productions such as I AM by Lemi Ponifasio of MAU and for Fijian collective Vou. Read more for what would Jahra do? When I first heard of ‘Jahra Rager’ it was as Jahra – the spoken word poet. What is poetry to you? Poetry came at a really important time in my early creative life. I was training at Unitec’s Contemporary Dance programme, and when I was in second year, I started to feel really constricted and suppressed. When you train for a long period of time in a concentrated regime with a (sometimes) singular perspective, it can begin to affect your wairua’s …

Jordana Bragg is one of Wellington’s emerging contemporary artists.  Her work ranges from film and media to installation and performance.  Just the other week her works This Is For You and We Are Okay featured in The Performance Arcade, the mini-festival in shipping containers on the Wellington Waterfront each year.  Much of Bragg’s work engages us with media art, and media artists in a way that in unexpected, powerful, and personal.  Her works take on characters and nuances that we expect from people, not screens.  Photographer Pat and I caught up with Jordana at Nikau Café to talk about her increasingly impressive portfolio, she is one to keep an eye on! Meredith – How did you come to art school? Jordana – I just kept doing art through high school, I became more and more art focused.  Actually friend of mine and I were the only students in our school to want to do classics, and we had to literally skype in a teacher from Marsden every session.  To learn art history. M – That’s …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to John Hurrell. John is an artist, writer, curator and editor of EyeContact a website which focuses on the publishing of reviews engaging critical discussion of New Zealand’s art landscape.  You’re a trained painter – are you still painting?  Yes I am, but in the form of sculpture production that sometimes references painterly markmaking. In recent years I’ve exhibited suspended objects made of cable-ties, peg baskets, curtain rings and hair curlers at Antoinette Godkin, Christchurch’s Artbox and Waiheke Island’s headland: Sculpture on the Gulf. Some people think there is a conflict of interest for a practitioner to be a critic but I don’t agree. When I was at art school in the seventies some of my lecturers used to write for the newspaper, and internationally there have been some wonderful critics (like Peter Plagens) who have been artists too. Plus EyeContact is a genuine forum with many writers – many …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to James R Ford. James is a Wellington based artist whose work engages strongly with objects as critique of how we spend our time. James studied at Nottingham Trent University and Goldsmiths, University of London and has exhibited widely throughout the UK, New Zealand and internationally. In 2013 he won the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Tui McLauchlan Emerging Artist’s Award. 1. Tell us about your current work, The Something Scratchcard at Paul Nache Gallery. This project came about as a kind of self-initiated-crowd-funding-venture to pay for a new neon work I wanted to make. The exhibition, which has just finished, was entitled Jeopardy and I was keen for the funders to get their money’s worth, in a way that correlated with the exhibition ideas of choice, peril and unmasking. A scratchcard artwork ticked all the boxes: the buyer gets a limited edition print of 100 and is also in with the chance …

Painting with Hamish Coleman Friday, January 30, 2015 Meredith Leigh Crowe Hamish Coleman is an emerging artist in Wellington who works with paint on canvas.  His work emanates a strong and thoughtful engagement with colour, from monochromatic, to compound or triad relationships.  His series that uses faces and torsos seems to capture snapshots of figures as they are on the edge of something, there is an anxiety, a fear of deterioration present in many of their facial lines and body language.  Coleman’s figures are isolated and anonymous, people you couldn’t get to know even if you wanted to.  Another thread of work is his engagement with basic geometries that goes right into the linen.  Coleman stretches his own canvases and many of the forms and scales he works with at this early stage of the process dictate the rest of the work.  I visited Hamish in his studio on a sunny Wellington Friday afternoon to see what he is making at the moment. H – This is pretty much how I have my studio, I …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to Lucy and Luke of Lucy and Luke Create. Lucy and Luke are a wicked duo who write, produce and direct their own theatre. Their latest play It Ends With the Sea is about to come out at the Basement Theatre. Read more for What Would Lucy and Luke Create Do?  1. Who are you and what are roles within Lucy and Luke Create? Lucy: We don’t hold specific roles all the time, things get shared out from production to production depending on what we’re creating, what we want to do, what we’re best at and who has more free time. For It Ends With the Sea, I wrote the script and am handling the publicity, Luke is directing and we are producing and designing the set and costumes together. Luke: Lucy & Luke create is our creative partnership, which is essentially a formal version of our friendship. Roles are divided according …