We are disappointed to be suspending the AF Gallery programme in these uncertain times. In light of the situation with COVID-19 this is the responsible course. We do this with the wider community and health system in mind. It is our feeling that in the current environment neither artists or audiences are well served by continuing with public events.

Follow the link below for more information about how the medical environment will effect the Audio Foundation’s programming
HERE

Sophie Sutherland is an explorative artist whose practice manifests in the realms of performance, installation and social sculptural. Sutherland’s works explore ideas of collectivity at small and large scales and are driven by her searching for alternative social structures within the contemporary capitalist economy. The methods Sutherland incorporates relate to ecology and sustainable systems of value, with her practice taking up ideas of and around language, handmade objects, and play as means of unlearning and relearning. With her work, Sutherland is interested in facilitating social spaces and activities that are conducive to spending time with others and/or the natural environment. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts and is currently pursuing a Masters in Visual Arts at AUT.

Sutherland’s work, Ball Park inquires into the relation of time, language, and place. Born of the relationships, communication and interaction that fill our everyday, the work explores the dynamics of time and language, playfully acknowledging the spaces we occupy when spending time with one another while encouraging further connection and play. Using the voices of Sutherland and her mother within the sound dialogue, Ball Park takes up notions ‘language’ and ‘beginnings’, conceptually connecting place to past while asking; how do we come to understand the world around us, and where does this learning the world begin?

“Mimicking is a method used to reference collective or group environments. The work is activated (or not) by the audience. The way that each person interacts with the installation creates a situated space of potential and actualized play that is different from the next.”
– Sophie Sutherland

The work of Te Ara Minhinnick centres around the alliances of people, space, and place, stemming from her Ipu Karea – the ancestral homelands of her Iwi, Ngāti Te Ara, Waiuku – Aotearoa – and is framed by contemporary realities of mātauranaga Māori. Te Ara emphasises a responsibility in this by employing methods of practice that offer vessels into ‘how to read what is around us again.’ In doing so, Te Ara turns us towards particular forms of looking, listening, facilitating distinct modes of making and thinking.

Minhinnick describes her projection for this exhibition, Te Kete Mā, thus:
This work as a body, sits within the space kept by the Māramataka (Māori lunar calendar) A cycle consisting of thirty nights each associating to a phase in which the moon is in.
As a way to remember, out loud the names of the nights are spoken.
A literal way of breathing the life back into a cycle lost to another man’s keeping of time. A time deemed fit only for the civilised.
A time now shared by all of us, the ‘enlightened’ race.
Te Kete Mā, speaks back to this task-orientated time and questions how the ‘other’ time can be kept.
A keeping of time that extends to, a keeping of space.
A space whose surroundings stretch the contours of a place and act
as a guide to gathering material.

Opens: Wednesday 8 April
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12.00pm – 4.00pm
Closes: Saturday 2 May, 4.00pm