The Wider Village

Edith Amituanai Double Take Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi 11 May–14 July, curated by Ane Tonga

Edith Amituanai is capturing the world as it happens. Hers are images that respond to the times, and in doing so achieve a remarkable timelessness; images which reflect on the eternity of the in-between. And what times to choose: best of, worst of, the end of the world. These are times in which our interior and exterior lives have become increasingly blurred; in which the imaging and reimaging of identity has been repeatedly and dividedly contested. And yet Amituanai’s images circle these concerns with a distinct wariness. It is as if she is determined to document not the moment of impact, the crashing of the wave on the shore, but rather its far-reaching effects on the beach, that ‘unresolved place where things can happen, where things can be made to happen’. To retain the remarkable impact of these images, there is limited distinction between the subjects’ memory and their present, the reflected and the real, the performed and the candid. In an interview with Edward Hanfling, published by this magazine in 2009, Amituanai is asked: ‘You think that art On the evening of Friday 5 July, the first Tautai First Friday to take place outside of Auckland was held in Wellington at the Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi. A reading of Victor Rodger’s play closed off the night’s celebrations. The play, inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s , has a premise that sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: one palangi and three Samoans walk into a room. The room, a hotel room, is theirs for eternity. Hell, we need no reminding, is other people.