Catalogue > At random

Six Artists respond to the work of Joanna Margaret Paul is a programme of short moving image works by Nova Paul, Rachel Shearer, Sonya Lacey, Miranda Parkes, Shannon Te Ao and the collective Popular Productions. A prolific film-maker, poet, photographer and painter, the work of Joanna Paul (1955-2003) quietly observed the intimate poetics of the domestic and the modest grace of her bucolic surroundings. This programme presents an ambitious range of new moving image commissions shot at home, in industrial space, nature and using a microscope within salt letter form – each film celebrating the resonance of Paul’s work and offering the catalyst for a collection of new work by a range of contemporary New Zealand artists.

Nova Paul teaches studio moving image and art theory in the Visual Arts Department. Her film-making practice draws from early cinema, experimental film histories and fourth wave film discourse to consider the poetics and politics of place, self-determinacy and the image and the role of story telling in talking back to neo-liberal hegemonies. Her writing practice has focused on lens-based media and its relationship to whenua (land). In 2008 she co-edited PLACE: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), a book that examines how on how long-held attachments to place are transforming in the new media context. In 2012 she published Form Next to Form Next to Form (Dent De Leone, UK and Clouds, NZ) this artist book won the 2013 Most Beautiful Book in Australisia (Monash University, Australia) Nova Paul`s 16mm films have screened nationally and internationally in film festivals and gallery programmes. This is not Dying (2010) has screened at Recontres Internationale, George Pompidou Centre, France, (2011), Rotterdam International Film Festival, (2011), New Zealand International Film Festival, (2010) City Gallery Wellington, (2010). Pink and White Terraces has screened at Whitechapel Gallery (UK) and was selected by Whitechapel Gallery for Artists` Films International at the Venice Biennale in 2013. The film has toured to Ballroom Marfa (USA), Fundacion Proa (Argentina), GAMeC - Galleria d`Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Italy), Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Norway), The Institute for the Readjustment of Clocks at the Koç Foundation (Turkey) from 2009-2010. Pink and White Terraces premiered at the Telecom International Film Festival, (2006) and was Telecom Prospect New Art, City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, 2007. Other film commissions include Our Future is in the Air (2007) for Martini Shot; New Artists Show, Artspace, Auckland and the World of Interiors (2008) for New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington. Nova Paul is of Te Uri Ro Roi and Te Parawhau /Ngā Puhi descent.