On the closing weekend of Image Processors, Adam Art Gallery director Christina Barton invited a panel of artists and curators to discuss the medium of video. Her starting point was the idea that video art is an unstable category that troubles our desires to categorise and collect. The panel featured Circuit director Mark Williams; Te Papa’s curator of contemporary art, Nina Tonga; writer and curator Lawrence McDonald, and artist Shannon Te Ao in this discussion, with questions designed to probe how video has served artists and audiences from the 1960s to the present.

Participants

Lawrence McDonald curated PALeo Neo Video - Chapters from the history of video art in New Zealand 1970-1990s which was a 1999 survey of New Zealand video art installed at the New Zealand Film Archive and around Pōneke. Four years earlier, he curated VDU: Video Down Under – Recent Video Art from New Zealand (1995) including a work by Lisa Reihana, whose work is also featured in Image Processors. McDonald is a writer, having worked as Editor of the film, television and theatre criticism publication Illusions Magazine.

Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) has presented major exhibitions across Aotearoa and recently in Canada, with video and performance as consistent touchstones. He draws upon Māori knowledge systems and the linguistic customs of Te Reo Māori while exploring contemporary issues and culture. Te Ao is also a writer, and a Senior Lecturer at Whiti o Rehua School of Art, Massey University.

Nina Tonga is an art historian, currently working as Curator Contemporary Art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. She specialises in contemporary Pacific art in Aotearoa and in the Pacific, with a particular interest in internet art from 2000 to the present. In 2018, Tonga curated Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists for Te Papa Tongarewa; in 2019 she was Curator of the Honolulu Biennial; and she continues to be instrumental figure in contemporary art.

Mark Williams is the director and founder of CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand, an arts agency that supports artists working in moving image through distribution of works, professional practice initiatives, commissioning and critical review. Williams has organised symposia, festivals and exhibitions that provide fertile platforms for these art forms. He regularly contributes writing and kōrero to exhibition catalogues, magazines, websites, and podcasts.

This episode's release was delayed while the gallery team installed the incoming exhibition.