LEGACIES exhibition

Venue: STORAGE
Exhibition period: 3 August - 1 October 2023

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.