At the Fair Category: Artist Talks

Friday 18-21 April
Aotearoa Art Fair, Jonathan Smart / Emily Gardener Projects

We warmly invite you to participate in Four Worlds Tarot, an immersive installation led by the Four Worlds Tarot Curatoriam; artist Julia Morison, Dr Anna Smith, Harriette Herlund and Alice Bonifant.

Morison has created her own limited edition tarot set, as part of her ongoing interest in narratives created through layering of symbolic imagery. Complimentary tarot readings will be offered within Jonathan Smart / Emily Gardener Projects booth designed in collaboration with Knight Associates.

Click here to reserve your reading

Friday 19 April, 4:30pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Envy

Envy, Wellington, in collaboration with Mokopōpaki, Auckland, warmly invite you to Afternoon Tea With Dr P for an in-person presentation of the artist’s reflective but optimistic and good natured, sea-bird centred environmental work, Breakfast With Broodthaers. Tea, Deconstructed Mussel Fritters and Dr P’s signature Colonial Road Dried Fruit Loaf will be served.

Attracted by the unexpected but amusing tensions inherent in consistently inconsistent understandings of unassuming ideas, Dr P cannot resist making reference to the work of Belgian conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers (1924—1976). Here, she reinvents his world-famous-in-the world assemblage Moules sauce blanche (Mussels White Sauce) (1967) and serves up her own indigenous flavoured critique of contemporary New Zealand culture. In an aluminium billy, purloined from an unattended cooking fire down at the local camp ground, gender-fluid, native, green lipped mussels nonchalantly escape the Eurocentric fine art ‘mould’ where, accompanied by an ironic bottle of imported British Brown Sauce, they become one of the many menu items already available on the sideboard or bird feeding table in the Breakfast Room of the shag colony.

Artwork Credit: Dr P, Breakfast With Broodthaers, 2023. Mixed media installation. Courtesy the artist, Envy and Mokopōpaki. Photo: Arekahānara

Saturday 20 April, 2:00pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Season

Hamish Coleman paintings evoke the complexities of memory and the panoply of emotions that flow from reflections on past experiences of beings, objects, and places. In this talk, he will speak about the subjects he is drawn to, and discuss his making processes—particularly his use of interference pigments, which yield images that change depending on the angle at which they are viewed.

Saturday 20 April, 1:30pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Bergman Gallery

His art practise, his McCahon House residency this year and his new works for the art fair.

Sunday 21 April, 2:00pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, OREXART

Johnny will talk about the stones he uses, the complexities of working in granite and marble and other stones. The inspiration behind each piece he is presenting at the fair (3). His travels in Italy, sourcing Carrara marble, and using NZ marble (Kaiuru marble) and working with his clients to complete installation of their works.

Sunday 21 April, 1:00pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Bergman Gallery

Her art practise, her journey, her inspirations.

Sunday 21 April, 12:30pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, APS Editions

APS Editions Director and printmaker, John Pusateri, will explain the optics of structural colour and the mixture of different printmaking methods used to create the displayed work by Andrew Beck, as well as the process of collaborating with artists on printmaking projects more generally.

Friday 19 April, 11:30am
Aotearoa Art Fair, Föenander Galleries

Visit the Föenander Galleries booth for an interactive performance by 박성환 Sung Hwan Bobby Park. Here you will be able to experience wearing the ceramic bullet proof helmets (BTM bang tan mo) personally fitted by the artist.

“As a queer person going through this mandatory conscription in Korea, I experienced first hand how fragile my existence was under the Korean military law 92-6 which criminalized homosexuality. Even though I was wearing this supposedly indestructible protective gear, the threat of violence came within the organization I had to be a part of in order to keep my citizenship which is significant for my identity. I made B.T.M with clay to reflect the vulnerability of the individual’s body and question what we are protecting ourselves from and where the threat comes from.I never spoke about my homosexuality with anybody; I had to lie about it because I didn’t want to go to jail … If I told anyone about this aspect of myself, that sense of protection and identity would shatter. My bulletproof helmet was essentially as fragile as these ceramic ones

Each ceramic helmet features an insignia of the three letters in the series title. It alludes to the iconic South Korean K-pop band BTS (which Park adores) and the abbreviation of “bottom” often used in queer culture. The helmet motif unifies his practice, linking the utilitarian shapes of earlier helmets he created with the flamboyance of more recent additions, which are covered in colourful patterns, artificial hair, protruding eyes and almost cartoonish paintings of faces.

Also, the B.T.M is a representation of the institution and its policies. Establishments and their rules are often regarded as sacred. But if they discriminate toward the very people that serve them, those rules and attitudes must be evaluated and reconstituted. So I invite the idea; those seemingly indestructible and sacred organizations and policies should be broken so that we can build a better one which eliminates discrimination for all people. B.T.M is a helmet for everybody. Celebrate our fragile bodies and our identities, whoever we may be.” – 박성환 Sung Hwan Bobby Park

Sunday 21 April, 12:00pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Black Door Gallery

Art and Psyche, discover the work of Cristina Popovici, Ryan Carter and other sculptural works in the Black Door Gallery Collection.

Figurative artworks serve as instruments of identity: reflecting our image, embodying who we perceive ourselves to be, and how we aspire to present ourselves to the world.

This talk will discuss how artists explore the human condition, and ask the question: who perceives the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?

Hosted by Black Door Gallery Directors Neala Glass and Justin Ewins

Sunday 21 April, 1:30pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Megan Dickinson Gallery

The collaborative synergy of Rosy & Rich finds its roots in art history, a nuanced exchange of ideas, shared perspectives, and at times, spirited debates. We warmly invite you to hear from the artists and gleen how their artistic process unfolds.

Image Credit: Kenneth Adams

Saturday 20 April, 3:30pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Bergman Gallery

Her art practise, her journey, her inspirations.

Saturday 20 April, 3:00pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, OREXART

Tony will talk about his new body of work Take the Weather With You, refer to specific paintings on the stand, along with talking about influences and living in and travelling in Spain and having dogs as gallery assistants.

Signed limited edition books will be available for purchase.

Sunday 21 April, 2:30pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Railway Street Gallery

You are invited to join Ina Arraoui at the Railway Street Gallery booth as she takes us on a quick explanatory journey into the history and beauty of the Intaglio printmaking process. It is a process of constantly reworking the plate, by relentlessly adding and subtracting marks, it is sculptural and the endless possibilities of varying intaglio techniques often results in artists combining several on one matrix, pushing their materials to achieve their conceptual ideas. An understanding of this process invites you into a new understanding of the work.

Saturday 20 April, 1:00pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Nanda\Hobbs

James Drinkwater in conversation with Gallery Director Ralph Hobbs about his body of work titled Fronte Oceano (ocean face).

“Fronte Oceano Blue pushed out from underneath. It’s the sea, it’s the sky, it’s the harbour; it’s the deep well of your eyes, behind them an ocean and its contents. I feel as if I’m coming up for air and the paintings now have lungs. Fronte Oceano (ocean face) is an intimate navigation of life by the sea. For the first time, I’m not only looking down into rock pools or across the sea floor, but also out and above into the infinite. I’m emptying the minds of my loved ones onto the canvas—specifically the cinema of dreams.” – James Drinkwater, 2024

Saturday 20 April, 12:30pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Jhana Millers

Join artist Hannah Ireland and Zoe Black, Deputy Director at Objectspace, for a Q&A, on Hannah’s solo presentation, Tossing & Turning, at the Aotearoa Art Fair 2024.

Saturday 20 April, 12:00pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, McLeavey Gallery

John Reynolds at the McLeavey Gallery booth introducing his presentation of new work, in collaboration with Karl Maughan.

Saturday 20 April, 11:30am
Aotearoa Art Fair, Martin Browne Contemporary

Artist Sam Michelle will discuss her solo presentation Rapunzel’s Garden with Martin Browne Contemporary Associate Director Dominic Kavanagh.

Friday 19 April, 4:00pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Tim Melville

Surface Tension is the name given to Joe Sheehan’s series of carved stone bottles, containers and industrial vessels – a selection of which will be shown in the Tim Melville Gallery booth.

The artist will speak about these recent works described by writer Greg O’Brien as reminders… “that the paraphernalia of our ordinary lives – the Tupperware and the screw-top – will in time become the fossils of the present age.”

Friday 19 April, 3:30pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Gallerysmith

The practice of Wellington-based artist Susanne Kerr hovers over the intersection between painting, drawing and collage. Her large scale but intimate works examine our relationship with the natural world and the social connections that drive human behaviour. During this short talk, Kerr will offer some insights into her mixed media practice.

Friday 19 April, 3:00 pm
Aotearoa Art Fair, Föenander Galleries

Lottie Consalvo is a celebrated artist living and working on the land of the Awabakal and Worimi people in both Newcastle and Pindimar NSW, Australia. Consalvo’s works explore the human psyche, imagination, dreams, memory and their place in the real.

Lottie Consalvo will be conversation with Graeme Douglas, host of The Good Oil Podcast and speak to her practice and exhibited body of work.