Legacies

26 April, 2023
– 26 April, 2023
7pm
LUX
A group of people all in black dress and suits posing for a family photo in a photography studio.
Epifania, Edith Amituanai, 2022.

What does a legacy taste, smell, sound, feel, or look like?

Legacies is a programme of five new artist cinema commissions from New Zealand and Thailand featuring work by Edith Amituanai, Martin Sagadin, Pati Tyrell, Sriwhana Spong and Ukrit Sa-nguanhai.

Commissioned by CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image and curated by Dr May Adadol Ingawanij the project began in late 2021 when Ingawanij sent the artists a series of propositions about the potential of the term ‘legacies’;

“Legacies are that which we carry, sometimes with pride and sometimes with shame, as the basis of social bonding, whether as things a people embodies with pride or as an enduring pain, a burden, some kind of ghost.

Legacies as: the pre-modern artistic, cultural, linguistic and religious heritages of the place and land that you were born into and raised in; the legacies of colonisation, and the spectres of nations and nationalisms, during and after colonialism, and their continuing shaping force; the legacies of the modern art/film histories, narratives, and ways of knowing that shaped you, and that bring an ambivalence and a desire to undo.” – May Adadol Ingawanij

The resulting collection includes a portrait of a young Pasifika matriarch; a reflection on the cinematic history of Thailand; an artist sculpting clay in their studio; an animation based on a Balinese painting made by the artists grandfather, and a vivid interpretation of Samoan funeral chants and speeches. 

The screening will be followed by a conversation between May Ingawanij, Sriwhana Spong and CIRCUIT Director Mark Williams.

CIRCUIT is an arts agency based in Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Supported by CREAM (Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media), University of Westminster.

 

Published in association with the 2022 Artist Cinema Commission programme Legacies, the Legacies Reader is a publication edited by CIRCUIT’s 2022 Writer in Residence, Thomasin Sleigh. The reader features contributions from five artists (Edith Amituanai, Martin Sagadin, Ukrit Sa-nguanhai, Pati Tyrell, Sriwhana Spong) plus fiction and essays from Huni Mancini, Tina Makereti and May Adadol Inganwanij.

You can download the Legacies Reader here 

You can learn more about the publication on the Circuit website here 

 

 


 

Access Information:

Auditory/Visual Access: We have hearing loops, a large print guide and magnifying glasses available in the space.

Sensory Access: Please note that the exhibition space is very dark, and the sound/noise volume is adjusted to a higher level.

You can find general access information here

 

 

May Adadol Ingawanij is a curator and film scholar based at the University of Westminster in London. May’s research explores histories and genealogies outside the dominant histories of cinematic arts; particularly avant-garde practice in Southeast Asia. She is one of CIRCUIT’s 2022 Curators-at-large.

Edith Amituanai was born in 1980 in Auckland, New Zealand. In 2005 she completed a Bachelor of Design (majoring in photography) at Unitec Institute of Technology, before completing a Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 2009. In 2007, Amituanai was the first recipient of the Art Foundation’s Marti Friendlander Photographic Award. The following year she was nominated for the Walters Prize at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. She has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums across Aotearoa and internationally in Australia, Austria, Taiwan, Germany, and France. Her artwork is held in national collections including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.

Martin Sagadin is a Slovenian-born, New Zealand based non-binary filmmaker and
artist. In 2018 they finished a Masters in Fine Arts with focus on directing and writing at
the University of Canterbury. Martin lives and works in New Zealand as a freelance writer and director making music videos and feature films.

Ukrit Sa-nguanhai is a Thai video artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand. Recently, he has been interested in the aesthetics of amateur film, local film history, and collaborative works with local people.

Sriwhana Spong is an artist from Aotearoa New Zealand, living in London. Spong produces scripts of her body that document in various mediums the oscillations of distance and intimacy produced by an approach toward another—most recently, a rat nesting outside her window; a newly discovered species of snake; a painting by her grandfather, the Balinese painter, I Gusti Made Rundu; and a twelfth-century Javanese poem. Recent exhibitions include Live Art Commissions, The Roberts Institute of Art, London (2022); The 10th Walters Prize, Auckland Art Gallery (2021); Trust and Confusion, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021); Honestly Speaking, Auckland Art Gallery (2020); castle-crystal, Edinburgh Arts Festival (2019); and Ida-Ida, Spike Island, Bristol (2019). In 2022, Spong will contribute a new work to the Istanbul Biennale.

Pati Solomona Tyrell is a Samoan interdisciplinary artist with a strong focus on
performance. He uses lens-based media to create visual material centered around ideas of urban Pacific queer identity. He has shown work at Museum of Contemporary Arts Australia, Pingyao International Photography Festival, Centre Pompidou Paris, and was a 2018 Walters Prize nominee. Tyrell is a co-founder of the queer Pasifika arts collective FAFSWAG, who in 2020 received an Arts Foundation Laureate, and in 2022 showed at documenta fifteen in Kassel, Germany.

Mark Williams is the Director and founder of CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image. Founded
in 2012, CIRCUIT is a non-profit arts agency that supports New Zealand artists working
in the moving image. CIRCUIT commissions new artworks; distributes a collection of
1000 works from 1973-2023 and publishes critical essays, interviews with artists, and
podcasts. www.circuit.org.nz

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