HORIZONS PRESENTED BY CHAPMAN TRIPP
CURATED BY DJCS
In The Harvest, DJCS brings together the work of Tobias Allen, Elvis Booth-Claveria, Jack Ellery, Kat Lang, and Aroha Matchitt-Millar.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Founded in 2025 in Pōneke, Te Whanganui-ā-Tara, DJCS is an art gallery dedicated to addressing critical gaps in Aotearoa’s art history, with a particular focus on queer discourse within the settler colonial context. Evolving from its origins as a project space in Tāmaki Makaurau (Parasite, 2020–2022), DJCS continues to challenge and expand the narrative of Aotearoa’s artistic legacy, weaving together and critically examining queer art histories within the broader tapestry of Aotearoa’s past and present.
DJCS actively critiques settler colonialism, interrogating how queer identities and narratives can both disrupt and unintentionally reinforce colonial structures. As C. Heike Schotten asserts in Queer Terror: Life, Death, and Desire in the Settler Colony, “The settler colony is not just a place but a logic, one that queer politics must dismantle if it is to truly liberate.” This critical perspective informs DJCS commitment to decolonial practise, confronting historical injustices, and fostering transformative futures.
In response to the challenges of securing affordable rent, DJCS has adopted a sustainable ‘DIY’ strategy, utilising unconventional spaces such as transitional areas (staircases, lobbies), rental housing, and repurposed buildings. By experimenting with new ways of working and exploring alternative funding models, DJCS strives to contribute to a more equitable and resilient art world.
[email protected]
www.djcs.co.nz
ABOUT THE EXHIBITING ARTISTS
Tobias Allen is an artist based in Glasgow, Scotland. They completed their BFA(Hons) from Massey University in 2021, and currently pursuing an MFA at The Glasgow School of Art. Working in Performance, Photography, Video and Sound, Allen’s work examines broad and difficult relationships between death, queerness and the body, with a focus on the deep-set emotional states to be encountered therein.
Elvis Booth-Claveria‘s practice expands through choreographic and performance-based video as well as sculptural and installation considerations. Looking to reconcile queer identity, body-environment relationships, and organic materiality. Jack Ellery is a multimedia artist currently exploring embodied performance, moving image, audio, sculpture and installation. Oscillating between immersion and detachment, Ellery aims to unpack human/nonhuman entanglements by embracing the body as an active agent of meaning.
Aroha Matchitt-Millar (Ngāti Rangitihi, Te Whakatōhea, Tūhoe) is a multidisciplinary artist with strong foundations in contemporary jewelry and ranranga. Her work is influenced by the practices of her tīpuna, intrinsically passed down through whakapapa
Kat Lang is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Their practice indulges a socially relational realm, using the memetic recontextualisation of physical and cultural material to talk through social space. Lang has focused their engagement in gallery context on amputating space, privileging immersive and auto-destructive art, rather than stand-alone objects. Lang constructs with an intent to pull at the threads of failure, meaning/meaninglessness, the sensory and its emotional appendages and the harvesting of sentimental data.