One Kiosk Many Exchanges seeks to create an exchange with this history through a series of performative actions within the garden using a pop-up marquee. The title for the work borrows the Turkish term 'kiosk', a word originally used to describe an open pavilion-like building to gather under but was later used by Europeans to describe a space to serve or sell goods from. Vea brings this mixed understanding of the kiosk in relation to the complex legacy of the gardens as being a place of colonisation and community, of collapse and rebuilding and of trauma and healing.
Recognising that they are manuhiri to the garden and New Zealanders' from many different cultural backgrounds, Vea and his collaborating artists will also explore what it means to be visitors responding to a site of rich local significance. They will attempt to do so by engaging with shared notions of unity, temporality, permanence and precariousness that have further significance within the wider context of Auckland's burgeoning population and growing housing shortage.
In collaboration with Kaitiaki Taonga Taini Drummond and artists Valasi Leota-Seiuli, Sione Mafi, Newman Tumata and Jimmy Wulf.
As part of the exhibition Share/Cheat/Unite
12–1pm, 8 October 2016
Emilia Maud Nixon Garden of Memories
37 Uxbridge Road, Howick, Auckland