And it's me and a friend left in a room / just me and a friend / out of this place now or else we're never gonna get out of here / just left in a room / that's all.
GRWM is a new group exhibition showing at RM gallery. The show brings together the practices of Aria McInnes, Keani Rewha, and Rita Takeuchi, into an exploration of the performed self. The title of the show GRWM references the viral online video genre ‘Get Ready With Me’ a trend in which the personal everyday rituals of individuals are performed and shared to a public platform/audience. Each of the artists reflects on these notions through their respective practices, analysing the contemporary online behaviour that surrounds them and its effects on everyday rituals, and the navigation of everyday life.
Aria McInnes is a Tāmaki-based artist and retailer who examines how sincerity is staged across personal and private life within consumer culture through a practice of sculptural installation. Within GRWM, McInnes displays an installation of an at-home gym. Producing a mixture of found and fabricated campy gym equipment, that shifts the gallery space into a set-like stage of self improvement.
Rita Takeuchi is a Tāmaki-based artist, who produces beautiful oil paintings that seek to delve into the exploration of the diaristic everyday. Reframing the typically overlooked mundane and pulling it into a place of meditative reflection to be remembered.
Maya caught up with both Aria and Rita about the show.
This Morning for Fancy New Band we had very fancy and new Tamaki based band, Masc/Femme!Despite not having anything released so far they shredded the studio!
Marie Shannon is a Tāmaki-based artist whose practice primarily explores the quotidian and profound details of her immediate domestic surroundings. Predominantly working in photography, but also video and drawing, Shannon delicately and intimately captures her subjects on a large-format camera, representing them at their finest through these beautiful vintage silver gelatin and large digital photographs. Narratives and objects of previous homes, love notes and faxes from her late husband Julian Dashper, and sketches by her son Leo alike, her memoiristic practice embraces both the mundane and the personal, inviting the viewer intimately into her world.
Her current solo exhibition at Trish Clark Gallery, Life Stories, presents a curated selection and mini survey of her practice – spanning works from the 80s as well as those from more recent years. Presenting photographs and a body of moving image works, the show brings together over forty years of Shannon’s work, life, and practice, many of which were included in her survey exhibition, Rooms found only in the home, developed by Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2018, which went on to tour Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland as well.
Sof had a kōrero with Marie Shannon about Life Stories and her overall practice.
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