The Physics Room Contemporary Art Kōrero - Episode 15: James Tapsell-Kururangi

This is a guest episode from Sonic Hapori, a collective of artists based in Tāmaki Makaurau, working within the intersection of art and sound. Its current members include Anahera Jade, Ilish Thomas, Mariam Tawfik, and Milika Swann. This recording is a glimpse of the return of Rona, a sound system who first sang earlier this year during Matariki, and is activated here for a kaupapa with Samoa House Library, a street party on Karanga-a-hape Road. K'Road is embedded in the recording, with layers of street chatter.

Curator Simon Palenski covers for Jane Wallace and is joined by Ashleigh Taupaki to speak about her artworks in her current exhibition with Tristen Harwood Gun, Paper, Obelisk. Simon and Ashleigh discuss archival voices, bureaucratic and unjust language, her historical research, site and non-site, and ways of visualising whakapapa.

Curator Jane Wallace is joined by Tyne Gordon to speak about her solo exhibition Desert Rose, which recently closed at The Physics Room. Tyne and Jane discuss gypsum, time-keeping, The Yellow Wallpaper, their site visit to Ōtepoti, and literary and mechanical technologies of reading.

On this episode, we share two special items related to our current exhibitions in the gallery, Tyne Gordon’s show Desert Rose, and Maxine Funke’s At Hilltop House. Listen to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 story The Yellow Wallpaper, a point of reference in the development of Desert Rose, and Maxine's three-part composition.

This is the second part of readings from Attention Studies, a quick-spirited serial responding to a year of cultural observation. In this episode, writers Orissa Keane, Millie Dunstall, Sophie Bannan and TPR curator and editor Jane Wallace read their contributions, You can read the full first three issues as pdfs on our website or find a physical copy in the gallery.