Presenters Outlines and Bio's
visual arts session (Sat morning)
Murray Hewitt visual artist
I was born in Hawkes Bay, both my parents were born England. I am a visual artist mainly working in video. I have shown in galleries around the New Zealand and presently live in Lower Hutt.
Murray will be presenting his video work Weeping Waters and possibly one or two other short works that are currently in progress. Weeping Waters, was filmed at Castlepoint on the Wairarapa coast. In this work, a surf beach with massive sand dunes is the picturesque location for an endurance performance, acted out by the artist. A solitary man is depicted, working methodically against gravity and fatigue, kicking a football while wearing a 1970's motorcycle helmet bearing the Raukura symbol. This image features albatross feathers and is a symbol of commitment to resolve conflict through peaceful means. The Raukura is an important emblem of the prophets Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi of Parihaka. ‘Weeping Waters' was created in 2007, the centenary of Te Whiti O Rongomai's death.
Murray will then talk to the whys, hows and general experience of making the videos as well as opening the space up for questions/discussion.
Karena Way visual artist
Karena is a 5th generation white nz settler, identifies as pakeha and tangata tiriti, and has been actively involved with these issues from her teenage years. Currently she is investigating the challenge of presenting an environment for transformative thinking using contemporary art practice. She has recently attained her MFA Honours studying at the Elam School of Art, Auckland University.
Karena Way will be presenting a sound and video work called Te Paina to Mercer which presents multiple voices and viewpoints of a single historic incident. The British/white Settler Government invasion of the Waikato in 1863. The work focusses on the first armed attack on local Maori by British troops, which took place immediately across the Mangatawhiri River and just above Te Paina (now called Mercer) at Koheroa. Te Paina is the origin of the eponymous Rangatira of Tainui, it is the whenua from which the present Maori king and all who preceed him, including Te Puea, come from.
This is a contemporary art-documentary work about a little know past incident which impacts on our collective present. It raises questions about our relationships with the land, our own histories, and the invisibalisation of that history. Concurrently it is about our present-day relationship with ourselves, other new settlers, whites/pakeha/tau iwi, and the Tangata Whenua of that place who were invaded, whose people were murdered or incarcerated and whose land, waters and living resources were stolen.
Hillary Oxley artist
Hillary Oxley, student of 3 dimensional design [4th year Student of Bachelor Design (Interiors) at WelTec], lesbian community activist,53 year old, Wellingtonian [Hutt Valley born] and i usually live in Tangimoana which is a small community [with many out lesbians] in the Manawatu on the mouth of the Rangitikei river. Ex member (1970-1972) of the Wellington branch of the S.S.S.A.
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and those who say that there isn’t. (Leonard Cohen).
Hillary will present an interactive workshop with a slab of stone taking a comparative look at memorials which concern peoples, events, sites, individuals and values. The workshop will be questioning "Do memorials motivate us via testimony or statistics? Is conviction or irony more thought provoking in these instances? Do they allow us to forget? Do we remember, sigh and think, "That's life..."
Anne Wells artist
I was born in Waitara (Taranaki), have lived in Whanganui-a-tara/Wellington for over 50 years, and now in Tamaki Makaurau/Auckland. I am passionate about living in Aotearoa/NZ and, as a pakeha, honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I moved from community development to treaty education work in the mid-1990’s and am now experimenting in expressing current issues of this country creatively, predominantly in the medium of paint.
As I started community development work, I attended an anti-racism workshop which challenged my attitudes and has lead me to whiteness articles, particularly Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege”. I am delighted to present a painting on this theme for this gathering.
I am currently a student at The Learning Connection but have previously displayed work in a women’s art group, Craftworld (Porirua), and the “Sweet As” 2007 conference.
Anne is showing a 20”x20” painting
Jack Trolove artist
Jack is a visual artist, community arts worker and educator based in Wellington.
Much of hir past work has looked at the politics of representing violence in visual art, looking in particular at possibilities for witnessing to violence, trauma and injustice without re-inscribing it.
Jack will show images from a show currently up at Toi Poneke called GhostPaper : Thoughts on being an unsettled settler as well as some video/photographic work in progress in order to discuss some of the creative and political dynamics she has noticed re-occuring when trying to make work in this area. She will talk about the haunting of remaking what she is trying to unmake and resettling what she is trying to unsettle, in an attempt to usefully unpack some of these dynamics... hoping that they can be re-wired into constructive medicine with which to treat this re-occuring creative paralyisis.
Tony Di Goldi theatre and exhibition designer
Tony is a Design Lecturer at Weltec, a theatre and exhibition designer and artist. Tony has designed sets and costumes over the past 18 years in particular with contemporary Maori Theatre productions Awhi Tapu and Te Karakia by Albie Beltz, And What Remains by Miria George, Taku Raukura e by Materoa Haenga. The Sojourns Of Boy By Briar Grace Smith and Jo Randerson, and Flat Out Brown by Briar Grace Smith. Exhibitions include the 2009 Shapeshifter,Jewellery Out of Context a New Zealand Jewellery Group Show in Sydney, Canada and the Netherlands and the past 4 Prague Quadrennial International Exhibition for Scenography including the interactive installation ‘Blow’ at the 11th Theatre. In July this year Tony is co-presenting a paper with Mark McEntyre in Belgrade at the Expanding Scenography 2 Conferance which investigates the identity of the artist/author in the construction of hybrid scenographic and performance design spaces. Currently Tony is designing set and costumes for Whiti Hereaka’s new play Te Kaupoi premiering At Bats Theatre in June.
The Work I am presenting is titled I’m all white Jack, and is dealing with the history of visual misinformation and playing with issues of stereotyping. This work directly relates to my theatre practice as a costume and props designer.
Writers and Poets (Saturday afternoon)
Michalea Arathimos writer
Michalia Arathimos is a writer. She is working on a PhD in Creative Writing at Victoria University and completed her Masters in Creative Writing there in 2006. She is currently writing a novel about a Greek New Zealand family.
What is seen to be the emergence of ‘our’ Maori writers in the 1970’s and 1980’s marked the beginning of a self-conscious need within white discourses to decolonise the national self. This formed the precedent for what could now be seen as Aotearoa’s ‘multicultural’ literary scene, which encompasses a variety of Maori and ‘other’ voices. But is this new ‘multiculturalism’ really representative of a new-found equality? In 1985 Keri Hulme won the Booker Prize for her novel the bone people. Her success met with wildly differing responses: some critics were euphoric, others openly critical, but all declared it was a turning point in Aotearoa’s literary history. Hulme is of Mäori (Käi Tahu, Käti Mämoe) and Orkney Scottish descent. Much of the media around Hulme focused on her heritage; Hulme was to be ‘celebrated’ as a Maori woman novelist, not just as a novelist. If we unpack this narrative of celebration and inclusion it is possible to make observations about who ‘we’ are considered to be: that is, who is considered the centre and who is the outsider in ‘our’ literary culture. What are the implications of this for those writing as ‘other’ today?
Glenn Colquhoun writer, poet
Glenn Colquhoun is a poet and children's writer. His first collection The art of walking upright won the Jessie Mackay best first book of poetry award at the 2000 National Book Awards in New Zealand. Playing God, his third collection, won the poetry section of the same awards in 2003 as well as the Reader's Choice Award that year. He has also writted four children's books and published an essay with Four Winds Press entitled Jumping ship. In 2004 he was awarded the Prize in Modern Letters, New Zealand's largest prize for emerging writers. He works as a GP on the Kapiti Coast.
Glenn will use his poetry and writing to discuss the cultural coastline between Pakeha and Maori, and how that coastline shapes the experience of being Pakeha. He will be reading from sequences in North South and The Art of Walking Upright as well as work from his new collection called Three Women.
Stephanie Christie writer
I'm a sole parent of a teenager, I write poetry and perform it and make little books that I give to people that I meet, I've been to and dropped out of and worked in university a lot, and I live now in the Waikato.
The White Arts
I compose poetry, partly as a response to what I see in the world that disturbs or angers me. When I try to engage with the 'bigger picture' directly in my work, I often feel strangely frustrated, and as if the conventions of poetry are working against me. This has made me wonder whether the 'high arts' are structured in ways that make it difficult, or seemingly inferior, to engage with things that are thought 'political'. Given that they could be considered culturally European, I want to consider how 'the arts' may tend to reflect and back up White privilege, both in what the forms can easily contain and in how creative works are related to (which) audiences. I'm also thinking about the constricting influences of shame and ignorance, and the possibilites of ways inwhich we may only just be learning to speak. I hope to perform some of my work, to talk about these ideas in more detail and for us to have a conversation about our experiences, as well as ways we've discovered to push through these unspoken limits.
Christina Stachurski playwrite, academic
Christina Stachurski is a sixth generation New Zealander. Her ancestors arrived in Aotearoa from England (1841–1911), Scotland (1842), Ireland via the Australian goldfields (1864 and 1871), and Poland (then Prussia ) in the 1870s, and included Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists. They settled variously on the West Coast and in Nelson, Taranaki, and Auckland , working as farmers, millers, mothers, storekeepers, domestic servants, masons, flax-cutters, publicans or miners. Two fought in the New Zealand Land Wars; the son of one of these was a surveyor and his son a historian who, in 1928, researched and documented the acquisition of Maori land in Taranaki by other Maori and Europeans, an unfashionable topic at that time. Dr Stachurski teaches Modern Drama and Creative Writing at the University of Canterbury , Christchurch.
Reading Pakeha? Aotearoa New Zealand, “a tiny Pacific country,” is of great interest to those engaged in postcolonial and literary studies throughout the world.
In all former colonies, myths of national identity are vested with various interests. Shifts in collective Pakeha (or New Zealand-European) identity have been marked by the phenomenal popularity of three novels, each at a time of massive social change. Late-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and the collapse of the idea of a singular ‘nation’ can be traced through the reception of John Mulgan’s Man Alone (1939), Keri Hulme’s the bone people (1983), and Alan Duff’s Once Were Warriors (1990). Yet close analysis of these three novels also reveals marginalization and silencing in claims to singular Pakeha identity and a linear development of settler acculturation.
This paper also asks whether ‘Pakeha’ is still a meaningful term.
Maria McMillan writer
Maria McMillan is a librarian, activist and poet living in Wellington, Aotearoa. Her Scottish and English ancestors settled in Southland and Otago in the late 1800s. Her poetry has been published in the NZ Listener and the Lumiere Reader, and in 2007 she made the long list for the Bridport International Poetry Prize. She has performed her work at festivals, libraries, cafes, pubs and protest camps.
/Sab: A sob, a gust, a gale of wind/ a land storm. The noise of the sea./ We're privileged so how come we feel so lost? If it's never dealt with does the grief of colonisation, war, depression and recession accumulate from generation to generation? Sab is a series of poems giving voice to many generations of a fictional Pakeha family whose joy is always and forever mixed up with leaving and loss.
Interdisciplinary Session (Saturday Evening)
Danielle O'Halloran writer, performer
(presenting work in absentia)
Danielle O'Halloran: Pakeha (Irish) / Samoan (BA Hons Pacific Studies), Danielle has been writing and performing her spoken/sung word poems since 1998 (Militant Angels/Daughters of the Pacific/Weave/Catalyst/First Draft Pasefika Writers). She has three gorgeous children, and an ongoing interest in Pacific peoples’ stories and representation in performance. Danielle is currently studying performance voice at the University of Canterbury and works at the Macmillan Brown Library.
Danielle is contributing a piece of work called "Once upon a time, Sina took an aeroplane to Aotearoa…" (from Fika, First Draft Pasefika Writers 2008 and Catalyst 7, The Original Branch Manual 2008), it talks about the afa kasi (half caste) experience of “whiteness” and missing ancestors amongst other things.
Ingrid Huygens
(see bio below)Taking the Pakeha family with us: Ingrid will show journeys of Pakeha change in coloured felt from a collection created by Treaty educators during her research in 2004. Imagery includes foundations of white supremacy, white mists of colonisation and individualisation, a nostalgic cultural conserve, as well as the importance of flames of passion to become part of a 'group that is changing' while continuing to struggle to 'take the Pakeha family with us'. Ingrid sees these works as 'visual theories' of decolonisation for a dominant group.
Debbie Adamson jeweller, artist
(presenting work in absentia)
I am a Jeweller and an artist. Making for me enables both a place to think and a space of thinking. Informed by a foundation of theory, the process of play allows me the freedom to explore possibilities where ideas take tangible forms. Products are the outcome of this creative interplay (between mind and body). This is the basis of my methodology.
My most recent body of work explores identity in post-colonial New Zealand. It engages with the boundaries of belonging and draws on cultural materials that are part of my perspective. Informed by my background (rural upbringing) and shaped by my responses (to research, reading and making), these pieces act as platforms of thought, working towards a sense of my own consolidation.
Treaty workers and Educators (Sunday morning)
Moea Armstrong Educator, Journalist, Activist
Moea is a Pakeha journalist, Treaty educator (20 years), and Green Party activist (national female co-convenor). I have just started a new job as manager of the Whangarei Citizens Advice Bureau (!); mother of a Pakeha daughter, two Ngatiwai sons, and nana of a Tuhoe/Te Arawa baby.
Moea will demonstrate/share how she does a creative visualisation (which is in this case a story of experiencing cultural domination) and current Treaty settlement process (role play) then invite particpants to improvise or suggest better/different ways to get the same message across or to look for ways to add value to what has been done.
Ingrid Huygens educator, academic
Ingrid Huygens is a Pakeha Treaty educator of Dutch descent. Her childhood experiences of how 'blind' a dominant group can be to cultural differences gave her a passion for developing non-colonial relationships between Pakeha and Maori. She has completed doctoral research on journeys of change for Pakeha in response to learning about te Tiriti o Waitangi. She currently works with new migrants teaching about the Treaty in 'plain English', and continues her research work as a community psychologist at Waikato University and WINTEC.
Pakeha undo dominance: At Treaty Conference 2000, spokespeople from organisations around the country described Treaty journeys undertaken in their workplaces since 1984. I interpreted themes in their discourse, including affirming Maori authority and striving towards a ‘right’ relationship with Maori. This gave rise to dissonance, discomfort and struggle in a long hard journey of change away from the colonising discourses that maintain Pakeha cultural and institutional dominance. I would like to host a conversation for us to consider whether such an 'honouring the Treaty' discourse is a significant shift towards decolonising ourselves.
Sam Buchanan anarchist activist, gardener and writer
Sam Buchanan is a first generation Pakeha colonist of British ancestry currently living on land that used to belong to Ngati Toa. He is an anarchist activist, gardener and writer. His previous writings include 'Anarchism - The Transmogrification of Everyday Life', 'The Madness of Trevor Mallard', 'The Nervous Triggermen' and a chapter on New Zealand anarchism for a forthcoming German book he doesn't know the name of.
Treaty Shmeaty - The Reinterpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi and the need for Genuine Decolonisation. A presentation and discussion on Pakeha Treaty work and the move to reinterpret the Treaty to suit the needs of the colonial government and Pakeha society. A critique of 'Treaty politics' and some modest, and totally inadequate, suggestions for moves towards genuine decolonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Richard Green theatre/film maker, educator
Richard is a theatre / film practitioner who has worked both in New Zealand and overseas. As part of his commitment as tangata tiriti to a functioning treaty relationship, he uses his creative skills to enhance his work as a treaty educator. Part of this is his film, Te Whare, and award winning short film exploring the treaty relationship as a modern parable. It has been recognised in the UK, Hawaii and the Ukraine for its unique approach to the subject matter, as well as being used in South Africa for a school extension programme. It debuted in New Zealand on Maori Television in 2008 on Waitangi Day and continues to be used as a Treaty Education resource.
Richard will be presenting (in absentia), his film Te Whare which was written as an historical parable to engage people with te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi.
Researchers (Sunday Afternoon)
Danny Butt writer, researcher, teacher
Danny Butt is a writer, researcher, teacher and consultant currently researching the transformation of art education under the university system. http://www.dannybutt.net/ Broken Whiteness
Martin Tolich's 2002 article on "Pākehā Paralysis" in the social sciences assessed the lack of intercultural engagement among Pākehā researchers in the wake of cultural safety discourse. In this presentation, I reconsider these dynamics in broader terms, with a particular focus on how academic discourses of "whiteness" may reinforce a white concept of race that prevents the movement that white people undertake in the process of decolonisation. In general terms, the aporetic nature of colonial-racial categories suggests that different political and discursive strategies are required for white people and their others. Therefore, while the study of whiteness can be a valuable (perhaps mandatory) task among the non-white, the discourse may not in itself be a framework under which white people can productively build alliances with emergent non-white cultural formations.
Helen Gibson
Helen Gibson has been involved in nursing/midwifery cultural safety education and Pākehā Treaty work for some years. A focus of her teaching and research has been Helen’s dedication to antiracist education and the significance of Pākehā socialization within that process. Helen is a member of Network Waitangi Otautahi, a Pākehā organisation that works towards a Treaty based Aotearoa.
“Discovering” and Uncovering Disturbing Silences: some discursive repertoires of whiteness I explore the manifestations of whiteness that constitute aspects of some discursive practices of contemporary Pākehā women in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I discuss some processes that developed for me as a doctoral researcher who is located within the same discursive terrain of whiteness as her participants. The presentation focuses on my struggles with the power of whiteness and its many manifestations, in particular the silences that surfaced as important aspects within the research interviews. These varying silences maintain and reproduce whiteness as a hidden/invisible hegemonic discursive practice – silences that powerfully maintain an existing scheme of privilege.
Aileen Davidson
Aileen works at the Council for International Development. She has worked in community development in Oater New Zealand, including with the Māori Women’s Welfare League; and in the Cook Islands and Tuvalu. She has completed the Master of Development Studies (Victoria) and the Master of Indigenous Studies (Otago) programmes.
While completing a piece of research recently with a group of five participants looking at identity, I began to ask myself ‘why do non-Māori choose to research with Māori?’ Notions of representation, appropriation and forms of colonization started me questioning my own research and led me to a hybrid methodology that my participants and I all felt comfortable with. I am keen to continue the discussion as I begin preparation for a presentation at the Contemporary Ethnography across the Disciplines (CEAD) Hui at Waikato University in November.
Hannah Ho (facilitator for this session)
Hannah Ho Wai Ling's ancestors hail from Canton and have settled in Malaysia for quite a few generations. Hann's parents came to Aotearoa in the 70's, and had four kids.
Hann has been involved in a range of things that include organising de-colonisation, anti-racism and gender workshops, presenting at Critical Whiteness conferences in Australia, and doing queer youth work.
Theatre Makers and Performers (Sunday afternoon)
Madeline MacNamara theatre maker
Madeline has been a theatre practitioner for 30 years. She is a performer, director, teacher and producer. She co -founded Magdalena Aotearoa, a network of women in contemporary theatre with Sally Rodwell in 1997 and was co- artistic director of the Magdalena Aotearoa International Festival of Women’s Performance held in Wellington March 1999. In 2004 she completed her Masters in Theatre Arts, in Directing (MTA) at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School and Victoria University. She is currently co-artistic director of Acting Up Charitable Trust, an organisation that provides training and performance opportunities in the fields of theatre, film and music for people with learning disabilities
Madeline will be performing 'The Attitudes', an excerpt from a longer work in progress that confronts issues of race, whiteness, power, privilege, and colonisation in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. The Attitudes are inspired by the work of 17th century performance artist Lady Emma Hamilton. Her work took the form of a pantomime of stopped passions inspired by classical art works of the time. These quickly succeeded each other so the audience had the illusion of confronting an arrested scene. This excerpt investigates the way in which 'attitudes' become fixed in our bodies over time and more often than not speak louder than the words we say.
Amy Mauvan dancer, choreographer
My name is Amy Mauvan and I am a contemporary dancer and choreographer. Last year I completed my degree in Performing and Screen Arts majoring in Contemporary dance at Unitec. I am currently an Intern with MIC Toi Rerehiko and DANZ. I have an interest dance film, multidisciplinary and hybrid art, dance archiving and using art to explore ideas opinions and social issues.
In the live element of my work I wish to work with the concept of individuals exploring the context of their culture. For these dancers and myself it is, for the most part an English colonial culture continuously changing and adapting to situation and context. A base movement phrase is derived from repetitive actions, movement or tasks the dancers perform day to day. When the dancers come into contact with each other, objects, space, situation or audience their movement changes, shifting what was there to begin with. Film one is a physical representation of ideas around viewing part of the whole. I have filmed in extreme close ups parts of the dancers bodies. The second is a more literal depiction, exploring displacement.
Miki Seifert Butoh performer and multimedia installation artist
For over twenty years, I have been exploring the cultural interface, developing collaborative art projects that fuse Butoh performance, multimedia installation art and political commentary. Tackling such topics as de/colonisation, deaths of undocumented migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, my work has been presented in the U.S., Mexico, United Kingdom, Austria, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Japan, and New Zealand. Originally from Bethlehem, PA, as a 2008 recipient of the NZIDR Scholarship, I am pursuing my PhD research at Te Kawa a Maui at Victoria University. Along with William Franco, I established With Lime, an international, intercultural, interdisciplinary arts company that produces innovative projects to stimulate dialogue with the long-term goal of creating social change.
He rawe tona kakahu / She Wore A Becoming Dress : I will discuss my collaborative Butoh performance with performer and writer Anahera Gildea (Ngati Raukawa-ki-te-Tonga). On 17 and 18 April 2009, we presented He rawe tona kakahu/She Wore A Becoming Dress to sold out audiences at the Film Archive in Wellington. The theatre was transformed into a high-end fashion catwalk with five video projections. He rawe tona kakahu/She Wore A Becoming Dress was a multi-layered event that interwove next generation Butoh dance, stunningly grotesque fashions, video projections and a live DJ mix. It was an ineffable investigation where the Butoh idiom was expanded through its incubation in culturally diverse bodies and which delved into the complex relationship between women, fashion, contemporary ideals of beauty and women’s self-image as played out on the real bodies of an American and a Maori woman.
Butoh, born in the postnuclear years of occupied Japan, draws upon memory, both personal and collective, and allows the emergence of form from within rather than imposing rules from the outside.
Lisa Maule theatre artist, lighting designer, manager
Lisa Maule (B.A., B.Des.) is a theatre artist with 20 years professional experience in Aotearoa as a lighting designer and a manager.
Lisa will present a shadow play in three shades on the themes "Creative Disorders and Hope" or "Does the wind help us discover?"
P r o j e c t B a c k g r o u n d a n d O r g a n i s e r s
The phrase creative disorders and hope reflects our feelings around this project and the histories we have with being pakeha and working here. It's an attempt to recognise that the dream of decolonising our thinking, our ways of working and image making is distant and often feels almost impossible given how the sophisticated mechanics of racism choreograph our movements on such a deep level.
The c r e a t i v e d i s o r d e r s reference our past (sometimes brutal) stumblings with this work and reflects Pakeha tendencies to reinscribe colonial practices while trying to undo them, trying to undo ourselves.
H o p e on the other hand, refers to a desire to shift away from padding the same scarred ground, to try for a new way of looking, to grow work and conversations like a much loved alchemical risk; seeping our craving for change in creative juices to stimulate new insights.
W h o w e a r e
J a c k T r o l o v e grew up in a small farming community in North Canterbury with her extended family on land which it appears, years before, had been stolen from Ngai Tahu. Before being Pakeha her folk were Irish, Scots, Gypsies and 'Spanish'. Growing up in a house with three (and for a few days four) generations under one roof, her childhood was full of stories – of relatives and ancestors and right back to the highland clearances, the famines, the gypsies and migrations. There came a point in her life when these familiar stories of the clearances strarted sounding too much like hiStories she was hearing about Aotearoa and since then she has been asking questions and trying to make sense of the deafening silence and hypocrisy that surround the telling of these (un)parallel stories of dislocation and colonisation. Jack has come to realise the difference that made her family stories 'ok' (noble) and others (Maori history) 'inconvenient', is largely 'race', or specifically, proximity to whiteness.
It took Jack a number of years working in this area before she got the guts to use, or trust her creative work with these volatile conversations.
Jack has been a practicing visual artist for the last 11 years, while also working as a community arts worker, educator, support worker, and art tutor. She has exhibited in group and solo shows in Aotearoa , Barcelona and Glasgow. While large scale painting remains her first love, Jack works across a variety of media; from video and wax casting, to site specific installation and performance. She has shown in the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, and in 2007 was the recipient of a four month Scottish Arts Council artist residency.
Jack has also worked extensively as a facilitator, educator and arts worker with diverse communities including people in the dis/ability sector, people living with mental health issues, sexual abuse survivors, people living with homelessness as well as queer and transgender youth.
She holds a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Massey University which culminated in a thesis and exhibition called ‘Remembering and Dismembering: Violence, Representation and The Body’. This research looked at the politics of representing violence in visual art, looking in particular at possibilites for witnessing to violence, trauma and injustice without re-inscribing it.
Jack currently teaches in the Fine Arts Department at Massey University, works as an art tutor at Pablos Art Studio and Vincents Art Workshop in Wellington, delivers workshops on drawing and gender theory at other tertiary art institutions around the country, and has recently begun delivering creative workshops in Ward 27 through Vincents, at the Wellington Hospital.
Madeline McNamara is a SouthIslander who has lived in Wellington for the past 21 years. She was born in Christchurch but raised in Nelson. Of Irish, Scottish, Cornish, Polish and Alasation (as in Alsace Lorraine not the dog!) ancestry, she identifies as Pakeha and Tangata Tiriti. She is a performer, director, teacher, organiser and community arts networker. She co -founded Magdalena Aotearoa, a network of women in contemporary theatre with Sally Rodwell in 1997. She is also co-artistic director of Acting Up Charitable Trust, an organisation that provides training and performance opportunities in the fields of theatre, film and music for people with learning disabilities.
Madeline's political education came mainly through her experiences and active involvement with the women's movement in the UK and USA in the late 70's and 80's and on her return to Aotearoa in the mid 80's, with the anti racism and Treaty education networks based mainly in Auckland. This learning has gone hand in hand with her development as an independent theatre practitioner both here and overseas over the last 30 years. This has included active engagement with a number of queer and women's theatre companies and festivals in the late 70's and 80's in the UK and USA including London's Hormone Imbalance, Double Edge Theatre and The Feminist American Theatre festivals in Boston, Massachussets. In Aotearoa since the late 80's it has involved work with theatre group Red Mole, Taki Rua Theatre, women's theatre festivals Not Broadcast Quality, women's comedy company Hens Teeth, Nga Mahi Whakaari O Nga Tamariki O Taone Hou, a Newtown based multi cultural children’s theatre project, The Magdalena Project, Magdalena Aotearoa, Maori Women's Performance network Tii Kouka, Acting Up and New Pacific Theatre. In 2004 she completed her Masters in Theatre Arts, in Directing (MTA) at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School and Victoria University. Madeline also has experience as an actor in both film and television.
Madeline works in the experimental, self devised traditions, which often involves an engagement with political or social perspectives outside the mainstream. She is interested in experiencing and creating for the theatre, ideas and forms that have hitherto been unexpressed in that arena. She is interested in the voices of those who have for one reason or another been excluded or excluded themselves from engagement with theatrical forms.
In order to support her life in this kind of performance realm Madeline has also worked over the years as a gardener, with homeless women, and with people with mental illness. She currently also does home care and support work with the elderly, disabled and convalescent while slowly developing a solo work based on many of the ideas being explored in this gathering.
