Not long now until the 2021 CTANZ symposium: Vision: Hindsight, Foresight, Insight, at AUT in central Auckland, 30 April – 2 May. Three days of presentations including keynotes by Dr Maureen Lander and Giles Peterson – you can check out the programme on our symposium page. There’s still time to register, and details on that are also on the symposium page.
There’s plenty of textile art around Auckland for visitors but even locals may not have got round to the latest exhibition: Cloth, at Masterworks Gallery on Queen Street, 17 April – 15 May, celebrating “all that is contemporary textiles in Aotearoa. ” Curated to coincide with the symposium, Cloth ‘ showcases the exciting and innovative talents working in this field today’. On Saturday morning, just before the first scheduled symposium presentation, Bronwyn Lloyd and some of the other exhibiting artists will be at Masterworks to talk about their work.
Further afield, Objectspace also includes two textile artists in its Autumn exhibition, with Jade Townsend’s Te Moananui-a-Kiwa, combining natural and inorganic found objects to reflect the connections made by ocean movement. In Matua moe Tama: Weaving Within Magafaoa, Salle Tamatoa and Tunaga Funaki offer an intergenerational conversation based around Niuean weaving techniques. These exhibitions run until 30 May.
At each end of their exhibition cycle are the two major exhibitions at the city’s largest institutions. The exhibition of the year, Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art, closes 9 May, although it now offers an online option for those who either can’t get to it, or would like to work out what they want to see first. This exhibition’s textile and textile adjacent work includes two pieces by symposium keynote speaker Maureen Lander.
There’s no time pressure however for the Auckland War Memorial Museum’s Tāmaki Herenga Waka: Stories of Auckland. This recently opened new permanent gallery looks at the city’s past, present and future through a broad range of objects and arrangements, including, of course, significant textiles. A shoutout to CTANZ members who have been intimately involved with this major project.
We are fortunate to live in a country where live conferencing is possible, so keep safe for the next two weeks and we’ll see each other for Vision 2021.