30 short, tentative steps. I came back by accident, took a peculiar shortcut, and found myself in a familiar hospital courtyard of bleached concrete. Infinite rows of windows peer down from a sandy brick façade; a stern assembly of quiet observers. Pungent bile rises in my stomach. Waves of nausea descend and my vision becomes […]

Ruby, you are sitting in front of me. I see you. I see you physically. But how do you actually want me to see you? How do you describe yourself to the world today? Within the artistic world, I often found that being my mother’s daughter came with a lot of expectations. It took many […]

In our previous editorial for Issue 17.1 we described the decision to explore the theme RESIST before this issue’s theme of RETURN as an instinctual decision. On reflection, this is not true. Our intent in choosing both words as prompts was to understand how they manifest in creative work. We see them everywhere: in material, […]

INT. EVANGELINE’S BEDROOM. NIGHT. EVANGELINE (mid-20s), dressed from the neck down in her  fursona — a Pink Husky Dog Fursuit in Shibari bondage — paces around her room. She sits at her desk and stares into the glowing ring light affixed to her phone, which stands ready to record. In the background, the documentary All […]

Jack Ball, Magic marker 8, 2023, inkjet print on rag, aluminium pins, acrylic paint, 80x 110 cm. Image courtesy the artist and sweet pea.

Hana Pera Aoake Te Ao Māori[1] asks us to reflect upon the stories of our ancestors as a way of understanding how we navigate the present and understand our responsibilities in the future. For instance, the stories of the demigod and trickster Māui, whoses name means to question and challenge, changed the world with the […]

Every hour I am paid more than twice a day’s wage to put a stranger to sleep. I stroke their hair three times then kiss their forehead in reverse. They leave their body so that another might enter as the strip lights change from green to blue. Reception tells me they come here to surrender, […]

A contemplation on the alphabet of a not-so-distant future: The found debris revealed that the written word was once considered to be a form of digital code.  (data). It existed inside and outside of the computer as a made-up system of discrete differentiable units. When assembled in certain ways, the meaning of alphabetic sequences could […]

To continue, to pick up where something was left off. The prefix ‘re-’ descends from a root meaning ‘turn’ — the return is a doubling, a sitting within the previously inhabited material presence that was left and come back to. Ekphrasis enacts a close reading of an artwork through text, the formation of a double […]

Within the hallowed halls of galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM), Indigenous voices echo with stories that transcend time and space. As an Indigenous person, working within these spaces is a profound exploration into unravelling the remnants of colonial legacies, rediscovering Indigenous perspectives and championing a way to understand our now shared histories. As an […]

Remember how we were a liberation army of two? How this two was framed by a third who ensured our brattishness didn’t _______ even ourselves? How ____ framed that burning year as a performance that could have so easily been another Burning Man fiasco, and that _____ our overinvested will to immolation. That beauty belongs […]

In the nineteenth century, French philosopher Victor Cousins seeded the idea of l’art pour l’art (art for art’s sake)[1], a phrase that has echoed into contemporary neo-liberal discourse to negate the need to consider politics in art encounters. However, for bodies that exist within any intersection of marginalisation and oppression, there is an understanding that […]

Walking along refinery drive down the harbourside I find three balls of steel corroded with rust, sweat and sugar. Monumental minor time dial turn anti-ode as antidote to a century and a half ago. Fiona pulls into the harbour carrying her precious cargo hand cultivated raw cane sugar precarious bodies, their coloured labour. Machines refine […]

the following is an excerpt of a poem responding to BIOGRAPHICALITY (2023) curated by Dominic Eichler at Efremidis, Berlin featuring Tony Just, Tamar Magradze, Anne Jud, Marita Liiten, Alex Müller, Xavier Robles de Medina and Stephanie Stein. This text responds to One Night Locked in S036 (1979) a portrait series and performance where Anne Jud […]