LEGACIES | ROUTES
Venue: STORAGE
Exhibition period: 3 August - 1 October 2023
Talk and screening: 6 August 2023
Venue: Doc Club & Pub cinema
Screenings: 11 August 2023
STORAGE is delighted to announce the exhibition and gathering LEGACIES | ROUTES, featuring moving image artists connected with the Pacific Islands and with Southeast Asia whose practices embrace a multiplicity of inheritances and de-centered ways of world-faring. Curated in collaboration with May Adadol Ingawanij, CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image, and FAFSWAG Arts Collective, LEGACIES | ROUTES is an invitation to gather around a screen to encounter, entangle, and translate stories that are rooting, growing and living nearby.
LEGACIES | ROUTES comprises an exhibition, in-person conversations, and an evening of film screenings. The artists’ moving image exhibition Legacies takes place at Storage between 3 August - 1 October, accompanied by a program of conversations on 6 August. The off-site screening programs Routes take place at Doc Club & Pub cinema on 11 August.
LEGACIES | ROUTES was made possible through pooling the monetary, labour, time and relational resources of Storage, CIRCUIT, FAFSWAG, the participating artists, curator, and moderator; and with the support of the New Zealand Embassy, Bangkok, the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM), University of Westminster, BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY, Doc Club & Pub cinema, Bangkok, and Aan Press.
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STORAGE
3rd Fl. 469 Prasumen Rd, Bangkok, Thailand
Opening Hours:
14:00 - 19:00 (Thursday - Sunday)
Graphic designer: Pam Virada
LEGACIES gathering
Venue: STORAGE
Date/time: Sunday 6 August 2023, 14:00 - 18:00
To accompany the exhibition, STORAGE will host a special day of in-person conversations and an additional screening programme.
14:00 - 16:00 De-centering Artist Moving Image
An in-person conversation with the artists and curator in the Legacies project, Martin Sagadin, Pati Tyrell, Ukrit Sa-nguanhai, May Adadol Ingawanij, and CIRCUIT director Mark Williams. Moderated by curator, writer and researcher Erin Gleeson (Director, FD13 Residency for the Arts, Minnesota; Advisor, Rijksakademie).
16:30 - 18:00 The Short Trilogy of Peace (2016)
A one-off screening of a previous work by Legacies artist Martin Sagadin. The moving image work The Short Trilogy of Peace comprises three short films made between 2012 and 2016. Filmed through a silk filter, a static camera observes the activity of a factory, a home, landscapes, and the care and rest of an elderly person. Filmed between Ōtautahi in New Zealand and Kranj in Slovenia, the mood of the films is patient, observational and painterly.
Before screening The Short Trilogy of Peace, Martin will present a music video that they directed for Richard Dada’s Pink Flamingos. Post-screening conversation with May Adadol.
About the panellists:
Martin Sagadin is a Slovenian-born, New Zealand-based non-binary filmmaker and artist. In 2018 they finished a Masters of Fine Arts with a focus on directing and writing at the University of Canterbury. They live and work in New Zealand as a freelance writer and director making music videos and feature films. Martin recently completed the CREST programme run by Jane Campion to support development of their upcoming long form film work.
Pati Tyrell is a Samoan interdisciplinary artist with a strong focus on performance. He uses lens-based media to create visual material centred around ideas of urban Pasifika queer identity. He has shown work at Museum of Contemporary Arts, Sydney; International Photography Festival, Pingyao; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Tyrell is a co-founder of the queer Pasifika arts collective FAFSWAG, who was part of documenta 15. His film Tolouna le Lagi screened in competition at the 2023 Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.
Ukrit Sa-nguanhai is a video artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, and a PhD researcher on the CREAM Doctoral Programme, University of Westminster. His film Trip After was invited to Berlinale 2023, Forum Expanded. He is interested in the aesthetics of amateur film, local film history, and collaborative works with local people.
May Adadol Ingawanij is a writer, curator, and Professor of Cinematic Arts at the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media, University of Westminster. She is one of CIRCUIT’s 2022/23 curators-at-large. Her Thai-language writings can be found in Aan journal.
Mark Williams is the director and founder of CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image. CIRCUIT is a non-profit agency that supports Aotearoa New Zealand artists working in the moving image. Legacies is CIRCUIT’s seventh annual programme of Artist Cinema Commissions, which has been widely presented in New Zealand, USA, Germany, United Kingdom, and Singapore. The project is accompanied by a new publication, the Legacies Reader.
Erin Gleeson is the director, FD13 Residency for the Arts, Minnesota; Advisor, Rijksakademie.
LEGACIES exhibition
Venue: STORAGE
Exhibition period: 3 August - 1 October 2023
Opening Reception: 3 August 2023
17:00 - 21:00
What does a legacy taste, smell, sound, feel, or look like?
Legacies is a collection of five new artists’ moving image works by Edith Amituanai, Martin Sagadin, Ukrit Sa-nguanhai, Pati Tyrell, and Sriwhana Spong, commissioned by CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image. Each artist responded to a series of propositions by May Adadol Ingawanij as CIRCUIT’s 2022/23 curator-at-large:
“What do we do with the legacies that make us? How do they hold us back? How do we go forward with the full force of the past? Legacies are things that we carry with our bodies, sometimes with pride and sometimes with shame, our emotional textures and our baggage, the basis of social bonding, an ancestral land, an enduring pain, a burden, some kind of ghost, an invitation into futurist kinship, stories for future making.”
The five artists selected by May Adadol were chosen following a period of long-distance research in partnership with CIRCUIT. Each artist was invited to make a short film articulating the artist's own personal response to the propositions.
Legacies features:
Edith Amituanai, Epifania (2022)
A portrait of an inspiring young Pasifika matriarch raising her family; Epifania, the rose that grew from concrete.
Martin Sagadin, Garden of Clay (2022) An artist sculpts clay in their studio while telling stories about their predecessors. The work affirms the artistic process as a circular gesture, one that starts with gifting the earth.
Sriwhana Spong, And the creeper keeps on reaching for the flame tree (2022) This film animates the insects found in the last painting by the artist’s grandfather, the Balinese painter I Gusti Made Rundu. The swarm imagines ancestry not as linear succession but as an accumulation of energy “charged with potentiality.”
Ukrit Sa-nguanhai, Trip After (2022)
A travel vlog mapping mobile cinema screenings in Northeast Thailand during the 1960s. The films were presented by the United States Information Service as a form of propaganda.
Pati Tyrell, Tulouna le Lagi (2022)
A visual interpretation of alagaupu (proverbs) used within Samoan funeral chants and speeches, utilising imagery from the artist’s personal photographic archive.
** Martin Sagadin, Ukrit Sa-nguanhai, Pati Tyrell, Mark Williams and May Adadol will be present in Bangkok
About CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image:
CIRCUIT is a non-profit agency that supports Aotearoa New Zealand artists working in the moving image. Legacies is CIRCUIT’s seventh annual programme of Artist Cinema Commissions, which has been widely presented in New Zealand, USA, Germany, United Kingdom, and Singapore. The project is accompanied by a new publication, the Legacies Reader.
The director and founder of CIRCUIT is Mark Williams. He will be in Bangkok to introduce a screening of recent artist's cinema from Aotearoa on 11 August and to participate in the public programme conversations surrounding Legacies and the agency’s work more broadly.
About the artists and curator:
Edith Amituanai is a photographic artist of Samoan descent who lives in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. She was the first recipient of the Art Foundation’s Marti Friedlander Photographic Award, and has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums across Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. Her film Epifania was presented at the 2022 Busan Biennale. Amituanai’s works are held in public collections including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki; Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
Martin Sagadin is a Slovenian-born, New Zealand-based non-binary filmmaker and artist. In 2018 they finished a Masters of Fine Arts with a focus on directing and writing at the University of Canterbury. They live and work in New Zealand as a freelance writer and director making music videos and feature films. Martin recently completed the CREST programme run by Jane Campion to support development of their upcoming long form film work. Martin will present their film in person.
Ukrit Sa-nguanhai is a video artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, and a PhD researcher on the CREAM Doctoral Programme, University of Westminster. His film Trip After was invited to Berlinale 2023, Forum Expanded. He is interested in the aesthetics of amateur film, local film history, and collaborative works with local people. Ukrit will present his film in person.
Pati Tyrell is a Samoan interdisciplinary artist with a strong focus on performance. He uses lens-based media to create visual material centred around ideas of urban Pasifika queer identity. He has shown work at Museum of Contemporary Arts, Sydney; International Photography Festival, Pingyao; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Tyrell is a co-founder of the queer Pasifika arts collective FAFSWAG, who was part of documenta 15. His film Tolouna le Lagi screened in competition at the 2023 Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. Tyrell will present his film and the work of FAFSWAG in person.
Sriwhana Spong produces scripts of her body that document in various mediums the oscillations of distance and intimacy. Recent exhibitions include Istanbul Biennale (2022); Live Art Commissions, The Roberts Institute of Art, London (2022); The 10th Walters Prize, Auckland Art Gallery (2021); Trust and Confusion, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021); Honestly Speaking, Auckland Art Gallery (2020); castle-crystal, Edinburgh Arts Festival (2019); and Ida-Ida, Spike Island, Bristol (2019).
May Adadol Ingawanij is a writer, curator, and Professor of Cinematic Arts at the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media, University of Westminster. She is one of CIRCUIT’s 2022/23 curators-at-large. Her Thai-language writings can be found in Aan journal. May Adadol will present the curatorial project Legacies in person.
ROUTES cinema screening
Venue: Doc Club & Pub cinema
Date/time: 11 August 2023, 18:00 - 21:30
FAFSWAG, CIRCUIT and STORAGE co-present two special screening programmes at Doc Club & Pub cinema, supported by the New Zealand Embassy, Bangkok.
18:00 Screening programme DIASPORA RENDERED
Q&A with Pati Tyrell and Tanu Gago, FAFSWAG Arts Collective
Diaspora Rendered is a compilation of short digital works and experimental films created by members of the FAFSWAG Arts Collective. These works explore the experiences of cultural displacement and try to unpack the term ‘Pacific Diaspora’, what it means to live in our current time with bodies and identities that have navigated centuries of displacement both geographically and temporally. These works show artists using digital tools to reclaim narratives, explore uncharted space, contemplate lineage and legacy, and redefine preconceived Ideas of self, family, home and culture.
curated by FAFSWAG Arts Collective.
Tanu Gago, Apparatus (2018)
FAFSWAG Arts Collective, Diaspora (2021)
Tanu Gago and Hohua Ropate Kurene, Savage in the Garden (2019)
Tanu Gago and Coven Aucoin, This is Glamour (2022)
Pati Tyrell, Tulouna Le Lagi (2022)
Pati Tyrell, Fāgogo (2015)
About FAFSWAG Arts Collective:
FAFSWAG was established in 2013 as an informal Queer art collective from south Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Responding to the lack of representation within the creative industries, the collective has come to redefine what it means to occupy a fluid sexuality & gender spectrum, a multi-cultural identity and a growing interdisciplinary practice.
As artists and activists FAFSWAG is committed to social change through arts and innovation, producing bespoke cultural activations that are cutting edge, culturally responsive and socially relevant. Operating across a multitude of interdisciplinary art forms and genres, FAFSWAG artists work collaboratively to activate public and digital space, speaking to our contexts as Queer Indigenous arts practitioners.
FAFSWAG Cofounders Pati Solomona Tyrell and Tanu Gago will be in Bangkok to present the programmes. Tyrell is the youngest nominee for the Walters Prize (2018), New Zealand’s most prestigious contemporary art award, and a recipient of the Creative New Zealand Emerging Pacific Artist award. Gago was awarded a Queen’s Merit of Honour for services to the Arts and the Pasifika LGBTQIA+ community, and a recipient of the Creative New Zealand Contemporary Pacific artist award. In 2020, FAFSWAG was awarded the Interdisciplinary Arts Laureate award by the New Zealand arts foundation.
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20:00 Screening programme RETURNS
Q&A with Mark Williams, CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image
A collection of recent short films from Aotearoa New Zealand exploring the eternal timelines of people, place and materials.
Curated by Mark Williams, director of CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image.
Leala Faleseuga, Product of New Zealand (2015)
Sorawit Songsataya, Mnemosyne (2022)
Phil Dadson, Headstamps 11: Homage to the Silk Route (2011)
Jamie Berry, Wai whakaika (2022)
Chris Ulutupu, The Pleasures of Unbelonging (2023)
Keri-Mei Zagrobelna, Te Pito (2023)
About CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image:
CIRCUIT is a non-profit agency that supports Aotearoa New Zealand artists working in the moving image. Legacies is CIRCUIT’s seventh annual programme of Artist Cinema Commissions, which has been widely presented in New Zealand, USA, Germany, United Kingdom, and Singapore. The project is accompanied by a new publication, the Legacies Reader.
The director and founder of CIRCUIT is Mark Williams. He will be in Bangkok to introduce a screening of recent artist's cinema from Aotearoa on 11 August and to participate in the public programme conversations surrounding Legacies and the agency’s work more broadly.
ROUTES cinema screening :
Screening programme DIASPORA RENDERED
Diaspora Rendered is a compilation of short digital works and experimental films created by members of the FAFSWAG Arts Collective. These works explore the experiences of cultural displacement and try to unpack the term ‘Pacific Diaspora’, what it means to live in our current time with bodies and identities that have navigated centuries of displacement both geographically and temporally. These works show artists using digital tools to reclaim narratives, explore uncharted space, contemplate lineage and legacy, and redefine preconceived Ideas of self, family, home and culture.
curated by FAFSWAG Arts Collective.
Tanu Gago, Apparatus (2018)
FAFSWAG Arts Collective, Diaspora (2021)
Tanu Gago and Hohua Ropate Kurene, Savage in the Garden (2019)
Tanu Gago and Coven Aucoin, This is Glamour (2022)
Pati Tyrell, Tulouna Le Lagi (2022)
Pati Tyrell, Fāgogo (2015)
Tanu Gago
Apparatus (2018), 20 mins
A series of moving image portraits seeking to provide a counter narrative to the media portrayal of Indigenous masculinity as fixed, binary and subordinate to dominant western notions of manhood.
FAFSWAG Arts Collective
Diaspora (2021), 10:11 mins
An exploration of shared histories among the diverse communities of Aotearoa New Zealand.Inspired by personal testimonies, lived experience and frictional points of view, DIASPORA tells stories through the body and the space between motion and stillness.
Tanu Gago and Hohua Ropate Kurene
Savage in the Garden (2019), 04:51 mins
The socially crippling representation of Polynesian men across mainstream image is an example of the continuation of the colonial exercise of power in daily life. SAVAGE IN THE GARDEN counters such dominant images and their subsequent narratives, concerned primarily with trauma, violence and punitive criminality.
Tanu Gago and Coven Aucoin
This is Glamour (2022), 05:00 mins
A visual poem that speaks to notions of chosen families, home, and connections that are born from the spirit of our ancestors. Written by Stellar Pritchard and voiced by mother Moe Laga of the House of Coven-Aucoin, this collaboration seeks to place these spirits into the Pacific narrative and the canon of Ballroom Aotearoa.
Pati Tyrell
Tulouna Le Lagi (2022), 05:00 mins
A visual interpretation of alagaupu (proverbs) used within Samoan speeches and funeral chants, utilising imagery from the artist’s personal photographic archive. TULOUNA LE LAGI explores oral traditions still practised in contemporary Samoan life, with the sound design reflecting the call and response nature of these rituals. Part of CIRCUIT Artist Cinema Commissions project Legacies.
Pati Tyrell
Fāgogo (2015), 09:04 mins
Fāgogo in Sāmoan refers to fables that are told to people in a shared context. The receiver of a fāgogo is vested with an expectation to pass on the story, making it their own and then passing it on. A fāgogo can mirror the real world in ways that transcend contemporary life, through cultural imperatives that pre-date Western beliefs and value systems. Often considered a place where heritage and tradition fall away from colonial distortions, and, in some instances, from linear narrative conventions, a fāgogo can build our perceptions of the world while simultaneously presenting us with perspectives that are ethereal.
ROUTES cinema screening :
Screening programme RETURNS
A collection of recent short films from Aotearoa New Zealand exploring the eternal timelines of people, place and materials.
Curated by Mark Williams, director of CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image.
Leala Faleseuga, Product of New Zealand (2015)
Sorawit Songsataya, Mnemosyne (2022)
Phil Dadson, Headstamps 11: Homage to the Silk Route (2011)
Jamie Berry, Wai whakaika (2022)
Chris Ulutupu, The Pleasures of Unbelonging (2023)
Keri-Mei Zagrobelna, Te Pito (2023)
Leala Faleseuga
Product of New Zealand (2015), 01:37 mins
A figure stands against a wall while a series of still images are projected over the top of them, signalling a journey through life. The images include old photos, documents from school, handwriting on scraps of paper and other ephemera.
Sorawit Songsataya
Mnemosyne (2022), 09:48 mins
Mnemosyne utilises photogrammetry techniques to reconstruct and remap 3D spaces from existing locations in Te Wai Pounamu (Aotearoa) and the northern regions of Thailand. These locations are around Ōtepoti Dunedin where the artist currently resides, and Chiang Rai, a home where the artist's mother lives. These places, relevant to the artist and their mother, are rebuilt and merged in a series of 3D environments where memories are abstracted and re-personified.
Phil Dadson
Headstamps 11: Homage to the Silk Route (2011), 05:01 mins
One of a series of performance works made by the artist in locations from Chile’s high, dry, Atacama Desert, China’s northern Silk Route, mountainous Yangshuo in South China’s Guangxi province and, more locally, Oruamo, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Jamie Berry
Wai whakaika (2022), 02:23 mins
A karakia (prayer) dedicated to the three streams of Kumutoto, Tutaenui, and Waipiro which flow under the CBD of Wellington. In pre-colonial times these streams were considered tapu (sacred), each performing specific functions associated with birth, healing, life-giving essence, wai Māori, food, burial and other matters with the dead.
Chris Ulutupu
The Pleasures of Unbelonging (2023), 09:38 mins
A woman and children walk through a landscape wearing large velvet robes. Birds call, a river runs, and the sound of a bell radiates through deserted streets. The Pleasures of Unbelonging, filmed in Hanmer Spring, a resort town in the Canterbury region of New Zealand’s South Island, unfolds through a series of dreamlike tableaux poised at the fringes of mystery and disquiet. With reference to James Baldwin’s Stranger in a Village, and leaning gently into the heady noir of Vertigo and Twin Peaks, Christopher Ulutupu’s new work stages a drama of encounter with the white gaze.
Keri-Mei Zagrobelna
Te Pito (2023), 09:24 mins
In Te Pito the movements of dancer Jahra Wasasala Ragar signal the umbilical cord connecting us to our surroundings and whenua (land). Keri-Mei Zagrobelna is an artist of Te Āti Awa, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui descent, based in Wellington. The artist hopes Te Pito will act as a guide, facilitator and creative portal for others seeking to reclaim identity and reconnections to whakapapa (heritage and genealogy); to heal past traumas, celebrate who they are and the journeys their ancestors have taken. Known primarily as a jeweller, this is Keri-Mei’s first digital work and was developed with videography by Pikihuia Haenga Shaw.