Public Relations: A performance series

Layne Waerea, Free Public Sauna, research image, 2022.
Image courtesy of the artist.

Three new performance-based projects will unfold at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and in public sites around Ngāmotu between August and November 2022.

Chris Braddock and Layne Waerea, Free sweat cushion-bags, 2022, cotton, nylon, salt tile. Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Bryan James.

Each project interrogates how we arrive at and relate to public spaces – the park, the gallery, the archive, the beach. The sites and institutions we inhabit are made up of multiple, at times conflicting, histories, values and ways of knowing and navigating.

Deploying humour, ritual and movement, each artist in this series intervenes in everyday rhythms of life, posing alternative possibilities for being, relating, and making together – if only for a moment.

Alongside the performances, an exhibition in the gallery acts as an unfolding archive of these projects. Opening with a selection of documentation from previous performance works, drawings and preparatory studies, and objects that will be deployed during the course of the projects, the exhibition will evolve over the course of its season as new documentation and physical traces of performative actions are presented.

Public Relations launches on Saturday, 27 August, with Louie Zalk-Neale’s project Ngā Manuhiri Taura (The Visiting Ropes).

Curated by Simon Gennard.
Performance Schedule:
Saturday 27 August | 2:30 pm
Louie Zalk-Neale

Saturday 10 September | 1:00 pm
Layne Waerea and Chris Braddock

Saturday 17 September | 1:00 pm
Layne Waerea and Chris Braddock

Wednesday 19 October | 6:00 pm
Fayen d’Evie and Benjamin Hancock

Centre for Design Research
Te Kura Toi a Hoahoa
School of Art and Design

Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau,
Auckland University of Technology

Contact:

Susan Hedges susan.hedges@aut.ac.nz
Mandy Smith mandy.smith@aut.ac.nz

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to publish images or illustrations with their papers in CDR; neither editors nor publishers of CDR accept responsibility for any author’s/authors’ failure to do so.

© Centre for Design Research, AUT University 2021