PAWA 2023 presents an evening of performance art featuring local and international artists at Altiora.

Artists:

Ivan Lupi (ITL/NZ)

Noel Meek + Jake Kīanō Skinner (NZ)

Josie + Kosta (NZ)

Eunsun Heo (KOR)

Works presented will be:

IT WILL NOT EVAPORATE (act II) by Ivan Lupi.

A taste of nostalgia and alienation served in two acts.

A kōrero with Stone about Deep Time by Noel Meek and Jake Kīanō Skinner

A kōrero with a large free-standing block of Oamaru limestone in a circular plaza outside Altiora at Toi Matatiki Toi Ora.

Meek and Skinner will engage Stone in a musical conversation discussing and exploring what Stone thinks about where Stone has come from, how it feels to be cut from living stone that once was living flesh, stone that is now on dry land but once was underwater, stone that is from another place but is now here.

What does Stone think and does Stone want to reply?

The water by Eunsun Heo

Throughout my stay in Aotearoa, New Zealand I will collect water (Sweat drops of some performers, someone's tears, water from the first shower, a raindrop, an ocean splash) . I will collect all of it into one bottle and evaporate it.

Water vapor slowly spreads out and shares the air with everyone in the space. Creating an atmosphere that is literally influenced by my own experiences and interactions with the water and people in this land.

Emotions are melted into the water, shared with everyone, and sublimated.

Even in your darkest hour I will not abandon you by Josie Archer and Kosta Bogoievski

Even in your darkest hour I will not abandon you is a new work by Josie and Kosta. Centred around an enduring flame the work will see the pair examine what it means to persist and find hope together. Dancers by trade the work will rely on their bodies' histories performing together with the audience until they settle in darkness.

**Please note performances may contain nudity and adult themes**

ARTISTS BIO:

Ivan Lupi (born 1972, Ferrara, Italy) has a Masters in Queer Studies in Arts and

Culture from Birmingham University. Since 2001 Lupi has been one of the founders and active member of the collective Amae with which he has taken part in various collaborations and exhibitions in China and Europe. In 2016 Lupi starts his own production as a single performer showing his work in the United States, France, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa, Lithuania, India, Canada, New Zealand. The most relevant events: ‘The Voice and the Lens’ - Whitechapel Art Gallery (London 2014), ‘The slip of the tongue’ - Palazzo Grassi Punta della Dogana (Venice 2015), ‘Transformations’ by LiVEART.US - Queens Museum (New York 2016), ‘Morni Hills Performance Art Biennale’ Government Museum of Art(Chandigarh, India) —‘Experimenting with a wunderkammer of vanitas - MACT/CACT Contemporary Art Ticino (Bellinzona 2016), ‘MAKING SPACE’ - CoCA - Centre of Contemporary Art (Christchurch 2017), ‘Visualeyez Annual Festival of Performance art’ - Latitude 53 Art Gallery (Edmonton 2017),‘Performance Arcade’ (Wellington 2019), ‘Towards the Forest’ - The Vivian Gallery (Matakana 2019) - ‘Not as simple as it sounds’, The Audio Foundation (Auckland, 2021) ‘La citta’ del Silenzio’,Pavilion of Contemporary Art (Ferrara,2022).

‘I am a conceptual performance artist, mainly working in the long durational format. My work acknowledges the fluidity of otherness within the dynamics of performance art. I am interested in the expression of our uniqueness and identity through vulnerability and intimacy. I explore how the artis and the audience come together to perform a caring community.’ -Ivan Lupi

Noel Meek is a Pākehā musician, composer, and artist based in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa. His interest is in finding meeting points with the non-human world and with te ao Māori in an effort to explore what decolonised works rooted in the whenua of Aotearoa might be.

Meek has performed extensively internationally and throughout Aotearoa. He has presented works with The Adam Art Gallery, The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, St Paul St Gallery, Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, SCAPE Public Art, Circuit, and The Len Lye Foundation. He currently sits on the programming board of CoCA Toi Moroki. He has taught workshops with the Christchurch Art Gallery, the New Zealand School of Music, and the Massey College of Creative Arts.

Jake Kīanō Skinner (Ngāti Rangitihi, Tūhoe) Ōtautahi based multi-instrumentalist, specialising in the practise, preservation and restoration of taonga pūoro. He has a love of the process of wānanga, indigenisation, and empowering people to learn the depths of playing taonga pūoro for hauora and performance. He has worked in a wide range of musical fields, including performance art, sound installations, and experimental music. He has presented works with the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, SCAPE Public Art, the Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki, and Stoddart Cottage.

EunSun Heo is a Korean visual artist who strokes emotions with performance. She is mainly interested in bringing out the age-old emotions in the space experienced in the everyday life of the past and expressing them as visual images. She participated in a number of group exhibitions and festivals in Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Belgium, and Germany with the start of the PANASIA Performance Festival in 2014, and she continues to work on videos, installation, and photography, focusing on performance work, along with various experiments covering complex genres (art, dance, theater, etc.).

At the heart of her work is always the keyword ‘water.’ Through the work of tears pouring out while peeling onions, washing the trampled cloth with water, enduring the weight of wet blankets, and nothing but floating on the water, she actively hopes that these performance will be in line with the deep-rooted emotion of universality at the same time as relieving the individual’s old emotions.

She also always speculates about the site of emotional connection and exchange with the audience through art because she thinks that the artist’s work is completed only when there is a connection between the audience’s behaviour and the artist's reaction.

Josie and Kosta are partners in life and in dance. Since 2015 they have been presenting collaborative independent and commissioned works nationally and internationally that have ranged in scope, venue, and aesthetic. They are committed to both progressing the medium of dance and celebrating its inherent beauty and virtuosity by creating works that destabilise the status quo of dance and live performance in playful and inviting ways.

They have been commissioned by New Zealand’s leading contemporary dance companies and festivals namely, Ōtautahi Tiny Performance Festival (2022), The New Zealand Dance Company (2021), Auckland Arts Festival (2021), Footnote NZ Dance company (2021), The Performance Arcade (2020), Experimental Dance Week Aotearoa (2020), Tempo Dance Festival (2019), Performance Art Week Aotearoa (2019), and Festival of Transitional Architecture (2019). Additionally they have presented works in the Asia Tri New Wave Festival in Seoul, South Korea during a month-long company residency. Other residencies include Healing Hills Art Collective (Morni Hills, India) in 2018, Wellesley Studios Summer Residency in 2022, and The Physics Room Contemporary Art Gallery also in 2018.

Contact the host of PAWA - Performance Evening 2