Share / Cheat / Unite is a collaborative exhibition between Te Tuhi and The Physics Room Contemporary Art Space. Featuring international and New Zealand-based artists, the exhibition delves into the human psyche to consider how altruism, cheating, and group formation play a key role in shaping society, but not necessarily in the ways we might assume.
First shown at Te Tuhi in Auckland last August, this version of Share / Cheat / Unite brings a new selection of artists together to create new inter-work connections and develop aspects of the original exhibition. Three artists remain from Te Tuhi: Anibal Lopez (A-1 53167), Yu Cheng-Chou, and Sasha Huber, and four have been introduced: Gemma Banks, Chim↑Pom, Pilvi Takala, and Johnson Witehira.
This iteration of Share / Cheat / Unite focuses on communication strategies and the use of language in the service of persuasion, coercion, and reconciliation. A new commission by Christchurch-based artist Gemma Banks situates these ideas in The Physics Room’s immediate environment of the post-quake ‘Innovation Precinct’; a model of neo-liberal urban development designed to legitimize and maximize productivity through a language of creativity.
It is the system’s Foucauldian reliance on language to uphold its values that the artists of Share / Cheat / Unite address directly. Yu Cheng-Chou, Anibal Lopez (A-1 53167), and Pilvi Takala focus on the human consequences of a market that privileges and valorizes certain forms of labour, while Johnson Witehira, Sasha Huber, and Chim↑Pom challenge the ongoing, and traumatic, effects of language within histories of inequitable power relations.
Each artist in Share / Cheat / Unite capitalizes on the system’s paradoxical relationship to creativity – the artist at once precarious and unusually mobile – to operate with one foot in the sphere of creative practice, and one foot out, employing guerilla tactics to actively share, cheat, and unite.
Share/Cheat/Unite Publication
VOLUME 1 opens with the first part of a three-part contextual essay by exhibition curator Bruce E. Phillips that draws on insight gained from political theory and social psychology to explore the social significance of the exhibited artworks. This first piece considers aspects of altruism present in the artwork of Darcell Apelu, Yu-Cheng Chou, Sasha Huber and John Vea. An essay by Leafa Wilson provides an expanded reading of John Vea’s One Kiosk Many Exchanges (2016), in particular his incorporation of talanoa within the work. This volume also includes an interview with Darcell Apelu, who details the personal significance of her work Generation Exchange (2016), which took place in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Patea.
VOLUME 2 continues with part two of Bruce Phillips’ contextual essay, which considers the ethically murky human proclivity of ‘cheating’ as explored in artworks by Jonathas de Andrade, Aníbal López (A-1 53167), Vaughn Sadie & Ntsoana Contemporary Dance Theatre and YOUAREHEREWEAREHERE.
VOLUME 3 is the largest issue in the series and explores the power of group formation. In the final chapter of his contextual essay, Bruce Phillips discusses the work of artists Mark Harvey, Ivan Mršić and Hu Xiangqian and unravels the political and psychological dynamics of unification. Mark Harvey’s Turquoisation: For the coming storm (2016) is discussed further in essays by Chloe Geoghegan and Christina Houghton. Geoghegan focuses on the work’s democratic possibilities by reflecting on an earlier iteration that took place in Dunedin; while Houghton ruminates on the ambiguous political imperatives of Harvey’s turquoise troupe as they travelled around Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Discussions of Ivan Mršić’s Ngā Heihei Orchestra (2016) and Kakokaranga Orchestra (2016) are similarly expanded in the writing of Rosanna Albertini and Balamohan Shingade — each illuminating the socio-political importance of Mršić’s form of collective embodied action through sound.
VOLUME 4 is dedicated to the conversations that initiated the Te Tuhi exhibition and those that ventured beyond. Phillips reviews the performative curatorial ethos and outlines the exhibition’s multiple formats. Melissa Laing’s essay draws on the collective knowledge of ‘Navigating Conversational Frequencies’ — a series of workshops that took place alongside the Te Tuhi show and later grew into an independent discussion group. Jamie Hanton writes on the second iteration of the exhibition that took place at The Physics Room in Christchurch and its significance in engaging with the urban politics of the city’s post-quake rebuild.
→ Share/Cheat/Unite; Volume 1, 2016, publication
→ Share/Cheat/Unite; Volume 2, 2016, publication
→ Share/Cheat/Unite; Volume 3, 2016, publication
→ Share/Cheat/Unite; Volume 4, 2016, publication