People have the chance to enjoy a chat and a coffee with talented artists at locations around east Auckland.
Back for its third year, the popular Art of Conversation project aims to highlight artists who already have a connection with the local community or to bring in those who want to create new ones.
Each of the artists involved will talk about their arts practice and work in their favourite east Auckland café.
It’s a free series for audiences to attend with the hope it breaks the formal nature of artist talks and supports local businesses.
All that’s asked of people who go along is that they buy a hot or cold drink from the café hosting the talk.
The project is curated this year by Jennifer Cheuk, a researcher, curator and independent publisher based in east Auckland.
It’s funded by Arts Out East and supported by Te Tuhi and the Howick Local Board and will see a different artist give a talk on their work at a local café every weekend from November 16 to December 1.
The focus of this year’s season is on underrepresented forms of artmaking, such as comics, animation and zine-making with an aim to uplift diverse communities, Cheuk says.
“We hope these conversations will platform alternative ways of storytelling and thinking about arts beyond traditionally Western perspectives.”
Talk 1:
Saturday, 16 November, 2pm at The Gallery Café, Uxbridge Arts and Culture
On behalf of Black Creatives of Aotearoa (BCA), Bareeka Vrede is a community arts facilitator and part of BCA. She’s been part of teams that created writing workshops with acclaimed international and national authors, lead the BLM archive, hosted BCAs bookclub, co-curator for the Black Ink book stand at Auckland CBD library, co-edited the Black Ink Zine, and more recently spoken about the history of black literature at the Auckland Writers Festival.
Vrede will be having a coffee at The Gallery Cafe at Uxbridge Arts and Culture, where she’ll chat about collective storytelling and ways of archiving social histories through art.
Talk 2:
Saturday 23 November, 1.30pm at Daisy Chang
Lindsey de Roos is an artist and arts worker based in Auckland and originally from Cape Town, South Africa. She employs a multidisciplinary approach with a variety of materials, focusing on social activism and exchange. Alongside her artistic practice, she’s an art documenter and writer. Through her work, de Roos aims to engage with complex narratives and foster dialogue around identity and equity.
She’ll be having a coffee at Daisy Chang, where she’ll chat about arts documentation and multidisciplinary approaches to social activism – all over a plate of dumplings.
Talk 3:
Sunday 24, November, 1.30pm at Gorkha Eastern Beach
Migrant Maharanis is a zine collective and activist community that creates zines and digital content focused on empowering South Asian voices to share their cultural experiences in a space that promotes progressive ideas, self-expression and individuality.
Shruthi Priya Balaji and Anndivya Ram from Migrant Maharanis will be having a coffee at Gorkha Eastern Beach, where they’ll chat about zine-making and digital activism.
Talk 4:
Saturday 30 November, 12pm at Te Tuhi Cafe
Hannah Ireland (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) is an Auckland-based artist who came to prominence for her portraits reversed-painted on glass and has since worked on salvaged windows, translucent silk and stitched canvas to produce captivating and elusive portraiture. Ireland uses paint as a mode of storytelling.
Her practice playfully narrates a personal theatre reflective of different social arenas.
She will be having a coffee at Te Tuhi Cafe – where her studio is – and will chat about her painting practice whilst showing some of her incredible paintings in person.
Talk 5:
Sunday 1 December, 1pm at Minos Pizza
Allan Xia is a Chinese New Zealand visual storyteller whose work spans a broad spectrum of creative mediums and disciplines such as illustration, comics and game development. Outside of his creative practice, he’s also the founder and director of Chromacon, a biennial Indie Arts Festival based in New Zealand.
Xia will chat about his work in multidisciplinary storytelling from traditional forms of illustration to the emerging technologies of Virtual (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).
Entry to the talks is free but space is limited so book online: ticket links here.
