#ōtepoti

[dec0mposing]

So my neighbourhood flooded last night. We got three months of rain (and its still going!) in about 30 hours, I evacuated my home about 10:30 last night when water started pouring into my street from the road above, my home was fine when I left and is still fine, thankfully, but my community has been really devistated by this event, and my heart is hurting for our hapori.

[extincto]

Posters seen in Dunedin/Ōtepoti today

[deliriumdunedin]

Previews of some of the items coming with me to the Beloved Market here in Ōtepoti this weekend!

A range of items dated from the 60s to modern will be available!

Come on up to the Māori Hill Community centre this Saturday the 27th of July 2024 from 10am - 2pm and support your local vintage sellers!

For more previews and updates follow me on instagram

[spencerhall]

Li'l animation for Ōtepoti Zinefest!

More event details here

Stall registrations here

[devonannasmith]

Painted a big mural with some cool women for the FIFA fan festival here in Ōtepoti. The Dreamgirls Collective, Aroha Novak and Kell Sunshine 🌞

[bridferchglyn]

Ōtepoti research trip in 3, 2… 1

[i-am-become-a-name]

i've never really liked the sixth doctor (yes I know the bbc shafted him) from reading the targets as a young'un but holy shit does the last few minutes of the pirates just make me gently want hug him and apologise.

[clarityofblue]

I miss you, Dunedin, the home of my heart. (a.k.a. Ōtepoti). This is such a nice way to view the world!

In the words of the great AoNZ band, Split Enz:

Aotearoa, rugged individual, glisten like a pearl, at the bottom of the world...

The Pacific Ocean is huge.

[hamishpetersen]

Goldfish Bowl

Text commissioned for the inaugural exhibition at Wave Project Space, Ōtepoti Dunedin:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Wave Project Space (@waveprojectspace.otepoti)

Listen to “So Tough” by The Slits. Make a cup of weak tea just to keep your hands warm and look out the only window in the living room. Doesn’t get much sun in April. Less in May, this side of the valley. You try not to check your notifications. You try to sit still. It’s not easy.

James Varga’s pictures form a haphazard diary to the last eighteen months. Starting with a return to their childhood pencil copies of cartoons, Varga began drawing again. It was a way to record the important parts of their world, or process the emotional soup through which we each wade. Rather than making pictures to “say something,” painting became a practice of picturing the world Varga needed to see. Similarly, they use their mother’s surname to claim that part of themselves.   

The difference between a diary and an autobiography is the audience. “What should my reader know?” “Does anyone ever need to see this?”

Listen to “Identity” by X-ray Spex. There is a picture of Varga’s legs stretching out to a sunburnt Alexandra backyard. Dead washing machine and semi-rural ¼ acre dream detritus. There is a picture of chopped fish and fish heads. If you know, you know. Being Tauiwi or Tangata Tiriti in Te Wai Pounamu can be full of placelessness; being anywhere at all down here can feel like the wrong place to be. Sometimes, we blame ourselves. Varga’s POV pictures evoke this feeling of waiting around for something to make sense. But pictures like that of the dish of fish heads have a different effect; like the sour umami of a fish head soup on a table of boiled hams and carrots; finding what you were looking for. 

Listen to “Pay to Cum” by Bad Brains. Varga adds a generous cock to a pencil drawing of one of their friends. For a laugh? Or because it needed to be said? In my brief conversation with Varga, it’s clear they are trying to cut through the absurd violence of masculine performance. There is a CD case for John Rowles’ “HITS collection” on the floor in the photo Kari sends me. It’s beside a painting of a milk bottle and some pencil sketches of muscled butts. 

Pay to write, pay to play

Pay to cum, pay to fight

Listen to “Product of My Environment” by Circle Jerks. There is a picture of a scrotum driving a tank. Like anyone, Varga’s mind wanders. Even when resisting the internet as subject matter or medium, the testicular posturing and violence of the recent invasion of Ukraine brought these globally televised politics into Varga’s pictures. Whether the picture is literal and figurative, or abstracted, comical, and political, Varga’s work seems to always be an act of processing, never solved. 

On Zoom, Varga and I talk about displaying the pictures like a “salon hang,” recalling the Salon exhibitions of the Academie des Beaux Arts in Paris where all the paintings accepted to the institution’s annual exhibition were crammed onto the walls. There’s an irony here for Varga as a self-taught artist. This antiquated mode of display can function in the opposite way to exclusive salons; more like an over-stimulating information soup, or endless Tiktok Trending page.

The high and the low are artificially separated in much of daily life. Instead, just as the punk poets Viv Albertine or Poly Styrene did, we are all cataloguing the boring, normal, enraging, hopeless, loving, small, vital, and forgettable moments of life in our own ways. Varga will keep going whether you’re looking or not. It’s one way of pushing through the clouds.  

[tciddaemina]

Toitū Te Tiriti protest in Ōtepoti, Te Wai Pounamu today, on Waitangi Day the 6th February. The new coalition government is threatening to make major revisions to the interpretation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi, Aotearoa New Zealand's founding document) in order to erode the rights and protections promised to Māori during the accord that founded the nation. Unsurprisingly, its blowing up in David Seymour's slimy face, with Waitangi Day kicking off nationwide protests.

Honestly, ACT, NZ First, and National can all go get fucked. First they want to reverse the offshore oil drilling ban, then they want to neuter climate legislation and downgrade sex education in schools, and now they're coming after Te Tiriti as well. Lets see how well that goes for them.

[otepotirenaissance]

First Church Ōtepoti Dunedin - taken by me 🎀

[dec0mposing]

Fanny Wimperis, Marion Scott playing the Piano (1904) Glass negative photograph.

Marion Scott playing the piano at Carlinwark beneath a pastel portrait of her deceased mother.

[extincto]

This morning's sunrise. Absolutely incredible 🔥

[have-you-been-here]

Dunedin / Ōtepoti, New Zealand / Aotearoa

[ftblmaz]

Swiss Nati welcomed to Aotearoa and Ōtepoti by Kai Tahu with a pōwhiri including this performance of a Waiata called Te Waka o Raki which is about Matariki or the Māori New Year which rises tomorrow morning

[devonannasmith]

My little portion of my shared exhibition that opened on Friday. It's up for a couple of weeks at 65 Saint Andrew Street in Dunedin if you'd like to check it out! Still a couple of ceramic pieces available. Will share some scans and close ups over the next few days, but there are some up on my patreon already if you are at all interested in signing up