Alumni Year: 2019

FRANCIS MCWHANNELL

Francis McWhannell is a writer and exhibition-maker from Aotearoa New Zealand, currently based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Museums and Cultural Heritage and a Master of Arts in Art History (First Class Honours) from the University of Auckland Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau. He is curator of the Fletcher Trust Collection, a major private collection of Aotearoa art founded in 1962, and curatorial adviser to the dealer gallery Visions. He is a passionate advocate for the arts in general and early-career artists from Aotearoa in particular. He was a judge of the Aspiring Art Prize in 2019 and the Eden Arts Art Schools Award in 2019 and 2020.

Francis has written for various arts and culture magazines and websites, including Art Collector (Australia), Art New Zealand, Art News New Zealand, Index, and The Spinoff. He contributes regularly to The Pantograph Punch, where he was Visual Arts Editor from 2016 to 2017. He has written essays for exhibitions at public and commercial galleries, including Painting: a transitive space (ST PAUL St Gallery Three, 2016) and Denys Watkins: Dynamo Hum (Gus Fisher Gallery, 2017). He is co-author of two books on historical photography, Bitter fruit: Australian photographs to 1963 (Michael Graham-Stewart, 2017) and Broad sunlight: Early West African photography (2020).

His exhibitions include Postcards from Papatoetoe (Old Papatoetoe mall, 2016), Fluid structures: Watercolour group show (Parlour Projects, 2017), and Projects 2019: Whanaungatanga (Auckland Art Fair, 2019). He is presently working on a group show of photographs with Chris Corson-Scott, Undercurrents: reimagining New Zealand, to be accompanied by a substantial publication.

RAINER WESTON WITH HIKALU CLARKE

Rainer Weston is based in Tāmaki Makaurau, where he is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts at Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design. Selected exhibitions include: HOTEL DEVON ISLAND (with Hikalu Clarke), DEMO, Auckland, 2016; Being Tween, Rockies, Auckland, 2016; The Devil’s Blindspot, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Christchurch, 2016; The Tomorrow People, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, 2017; fine moon, poor tuning, MEANWHILE, Wellington, 2018; and sometime, someday, when all is said and done, RM Gallery, Auckland, 2019.

Hikalu Clarke is based in Tāmaki Makaurau. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design and was co-developer of the institution’s DEMO project space. He recently completed a residency with Gasworks in London. Recent exhibitions include: New Perspectives, Artspace, Auckland, 2016; HOTEL DEVON ISLAND (with Rainer Weston), DEMO, Auckland, 2016; The Tomorrow People, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, 2017; IT’S A POND NOT A MOAT, MEANWHILE, Wellington, 2017; Necessary Threat, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin, 2017; and Accurate Community Projections, Te Tuhi, Auckland, 2018.

RACHEL ASHBY WITH SARAH CALLESEN & OTHERS

Rachel Ashby was born Ōtautahi but is now based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from Elam School of Fine Arts. She is currently completing a history degree at the University of Auckland and is the host of 95bFM’s contemporary arts show Artbank. Ashby is interested in exploring ideas of collaboration, community, and rupture through sound.

Sarah Callesen grew up in rural Manawatū and currently lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, where she is completing a Master of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts. Her interdisciplinary practice explores mediated perceptual experiences of the world, the recording and translation of information, and gendered histories.

LAYNE WAEREA

Layne Waerea (Te Arawa, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist whose practice centres on installations and performance art interventions. Her works seek to challenge and play with social and legal ambiguities in the public sphere. Waerea uses her experiences as a former lawyer and lecturer in law to inform her artistic work, focussing in particular on how te Tiriti o Waitangi might continue to play a critical role in the developing cultural fabric of Aotearoa. Recent exhibitions include Hybrid Spring (with Deborah Rundle), Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington, 2018; and Two Oceans at Once, ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland.

CAITLIN PATANE

Caitlin Patane is an Australian artist based in Melbourne. She is Editorial Assistant at Art+Australia. Her practice focusses on writing, drawing, and an engagement with text and texts, and is concerned with ideas around history, translation, and the social potential of language in its many forms. Patane has developed a particular interest in publishing and editing as artistic practice, investigating the space between literature and conceptual art.

NIKAU HINDIN

Nikau Hindin (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) is an artist working to reawaken Māori aute, more widely known as tapa. Aute was a canoe plant brought to Aotearoa by ancestress Whakaotirangi and then pounded into cloth to make adornments, garments (maro), and kites (manu aute). Hindin’s mission to re-learn the making of aute was inspired by her experiences sailing and being taught about waka haurua in Hawaiʻi. She is particularly interested in the sharing of knowledge about, and the collective production of, the material, which puts her in direct conversation with her ancestors’ practice.

RUTH IGE

Ruth Ige is a Nigerian-born artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology. Recent exhibitions include Dirt Future, Artspace, Auckland, 2017; Never an Answer: 12 Abstract Painters, The Vivian, Matakana, 2018; LISTE – Art Fair Basel, Switzerland, 2018; and Two Oceans at Once, ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland, current. Ige explores blackness by way of a painting practice that moves between gestural abstraction and figuration. She aims to create new narratives, placing her figures in what she calls ‘future-oriented spaces’, and creating images that are enigmatic, even secretive.

PĀN¡A! IN ASSOCIATION WITH FRANCIS MCWHANNELL & MOKOPŌPAKI

PĀNiA!, the anonymous and enigmatic but always interesting über-cool-girl, artist-about-town is a country babe at heart. She likes piña coladas, and getting caught in the rain. She’s not into yoga and has half a brain. If you like art made at midnight, and a thick slice of cake, she is the love that you’ve looked for; tautoko PĀNiA! and escape.

Francis McWhannell is an independent curator and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. He has contributed to various arts and culture magazines and websites in Aotearoa and Australia. Recent publications featuring his work include Dynamo Hum: Denys Watkins: Selected Paintings 2004–2016 (2017), and Painting: A Transitive Space (2017). Nounman is his first foray into artistic collaboration. It wasn’t his idea.

FAISAL ABDU’ALLAH

Dr. Faisal Abdu’Allah is a Professor of Art and Faculty Director of UW-Madison’s Creative Arts Community, The Studio. He graduated from the Royal College of Art, and completed his PhD in 2012 at the University of East London. His work has been exhibited widely, including at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno in Gran Canaria (2012), National Portrait Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery (2009), British Film Institute Gallery (2008), Serpentine Gallery (2006), and the Chisenhale Gallery (2003) in London, and Studio Museum Harlem (1997). His works are in the collections of Tate Britain (London), the V&A (London), the National Maritime Museum (London), the Chazen Museum (Madison), CAAM (Gran Canaria) and the British Arts Council.

‘The two key concepts that hold Abdu’Allah’s work in place are reflection and return. The human subject for Abdu’Allah is either bewildered, traumatised, dead or resurrected. Physical and mental turbulence haunt his practice and photography as a tool for capture serves his desire to reframe the past and make tangible the present. As a collective body his practice amounts to an informal and personal interdisciplinary “institute of information” that works to challenge the academies of science, philosophy and the arts, grounded in an acute understanding of the seductive nature of the material world and moulded through ongoing enquiries into how the visual works upon and within the construction of difference… If the relationship between history and violence represents unending and uneven threads of knowledge, when these dynamics are woven together we are primed to consider Abdu’Allah’s works as signposts towards a new becoming, and a place of human celebration and healing.’ – Dr. Mark Sealy MBE

JAMES WYLIE WITH HANNAH VALENTINE

James Wylie is based in Tāmaki Makaurau. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts and was co-founder of the artist-run space Snake Pit. His work centres on questions of technological progress, promoting reflection in a time of rapid change. Recent exhibitions include: ぐるぐると登り続けること (round and round, up and up), Studio Kura, Itoshima, Japan, 2018; Offline Browser, 6th Taipei International Video Art Exhibition, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, 2018; and Sometime, someday, when all is said and done, RM Gallery, Auckland, 2019.

Hannah Valentine holds a Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts. Her practice explores questions of the body, movement, and participation. Recent exhibitions include: New Perspectives, Artspace, Auckland, 2016; Flex, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, 2017; and Looking in, breathing out, Enjoy Public Art Gallery, 2018.

AMMON NGAKURU

Ammon Ngakuru lives in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology and a Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts. Recent exhibitions include: The Tomorrow People, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Pōneke Wellington, 2017; A Shelter for Amnesic Relatives, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Ōtepoti Dunedin, 2017; Thoughts on Secrecy, RM, Tāmaki Makaurau, 2017; Many Happy Returns, Hopkinson Mossman, Tāmaki Makaurau, 2018; Uncomfortable Silence, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Ōtautahi Christchurch, 2020; and Cutouts, Enjoy, Pōneke Wellington, 2020.