These communities were also coming to terms with the fact that they were no longer a reviled minority and realised that, if they wished to keep an identity that had been created through legal and social oppression over the course of two centuries, they needed to work to maintain their unique culture and to remember its long history.[1] —David Herkt, 2013 Is this feeling optimism? It is certainly...
Owen Connors Owen Connors (born 1992) is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist and poet with an interest in the mystical, and in craft and cooperative making processes. Their superb 2019 exhibition, SISSYMANCY!, at play_station in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, comprised a series of patchwork and quilted banners. The works were intended to recall quilts produced collaboratively in commemoration of people who...
Artspace’s current exhibition, New Perspectives, features the work of more than 20 artists whose work has begun to make ripples in the local scene. Produced in collaboration with Berlin-based New Zealand artist Simon Denny, the show encompasses an impressive range of material, including eye-wateringly fine paper-based works by Motoko Kikkawa, visceral poems by Owen Connors (printed intransigently...