Exhibitions
Heatwave, RM Gallery Auckland
Poster design by Zoe Hannay
Heatwave
‘Summer’s sting is sharp when the sun dips out of our reach. It falls through me like sand in a sieve. In the sticky heat of January, I tried to gather it, holding it lightly with my fingers splayed. Wavering on a tightrope, I spilled the itchy grains over everything. We cried and cried as I tried to sweep them up, gathering pieces until all the trees dried up and turned red. Before it could be caught, summertime drifted off and we never spoke again. My room was so hot that night, it was a feeling I couldn’t quite name.
The ephemerality of summer is inadvertently spoken about year after year. We yearn for its arrival, then question whether it lived up to the last. It’s reflected on, mourned, and then yearned for until the season rolls around again, each iteration replacing the years prior.
I think there’s no better way to depict temporariness than through a body of works set in the summer. Looking to hauntology and other Derridean ideas of deconstruction as a conceptual framework for artmaking, I often feel things start to disappear as soon as they’re made solid – as though giving form to memory also begins its erosion.
Both solid and spectral, this collection of works offers a lament of the contradiction of memory. ‘Heatwave’ presents figures and scenes of season’s past – some collaged into each other, further obfuscating any chance at clear narrative recollection. They are the product of many years, across many summers, each haunted by the last.’
Link to response text by Juliette Berkeley
Roomsheet
Upcoming:
Gallery 138, Window Exhibition 1st of August 2025 (Title TBC)