Parnell Project Space is an exhibition, performance and event space located on the platform at Parnell Station, Tāmaki Makaurau.
Location
Parnell Station
25 Cheshire Street
Parnell 1052
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Te Tuhi at Parnell Station incorporates Te Tuhi Studios and Parnell Project Space. You can find out more about Te Tuhi at Parnell Station here.
Parnell Project Space engages with contemporary curators and artists who have an interest in experimental and social practices, providing an environment in which artists and curators can develop their practices and expand their networks.
Find out what’s currently on at Parnell Project Space or explore our archive of past projects below.
Current Curatorial Intern: Felixe Laing 2022 – 2023
Felixe Laing is the current curatorial intern, beginning her research project in July 2022. She is running her project Chez Derriere over the course of 2023 at the Parnell Project Space.
Chez Derriere, in its literal French translation, describes ‘a place of business or home at the behind’. The name refers to its physical location in the back of Parnell but also as a space for experimentation and emerging practice. The name Chez Derriere also references Felixe’s family history of her parents as restaurateurs.
Through Chez Derriere, Felixe is exploring the role of the ‘host’ in the context of hospitality in relation to the role of the curator in contemporary art - thinking about how to host and care for audiences, artists and ideas within exhibition making and alternative event based curatorial models.
Felixe sees Chez Derriere as a space for play; shifting focus away from resolved outcomes and centering playful research, performance and participation.
Chez Derriere’s first exhibition, Uma Tuffnell: showstopper positioned itself in opposition to the rigid and serious structures of arts policy and funding models and carved out a space for play, undetermined outcomes and failure. In the upcoming Play workshop series, artists will engage audiences in their playful and generative research practices, which will inform a group exhibition of new artworks.
A food focused series is also being developed, in which artists are invited to explore food as material and tool to ground audience experiences through the bodily practice of eating and the social, in-person rituals of meal sharing, to support conceptual engagement.
An ongoing part of Chez Derriere is the Art writing programme which aims to foster peer mentorship and writing as practice and is running from November 2022 to April 2023 .
Felixe Laing is a curator and writer and has worked across the arts sector in Aotearoa, recently at The Dowse Art Museum where she developed a five-part speaker series for their 50th anniversary programme. She has written for a variety of Aotearoa publications, including Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, The Art Paper and Vernacular. She graduated with a BFA (Hons) from Elam School of Fine Arts UoA in 2016 and a Master of Museum and Heritage Practice from Victoria University of Wellington (Distinction) in 2021.