14 January – 21 February 2026
Opening 14 January at 6:00pm
Pātaka Wā
Tia Barrett
Pātaka Wā centres on the lifecycle of tuna by bringing a consciousness to the biology of time. Static latex tuna skins embody time in this installation by locking it in, tying it up, and hanging it on a line, represented through 30 lunar phases and speaking to the tension between decay and the transformation of flesh. As human skin wrinkles and thins with age, tuna skin changes colour and tone, as reflected in the maramataka.
In contrast, the moving image becomes the pulse of the installation; it is the animating breath. Flowing water and drifting air bubbles are making mauri present within the space. The clotheslines become the spines of the installation, temporal lines that reach across the site, intersecting with the movements of tuna as they emerge and disappear through the wall.
These tuna, who seamlessly break through the walls of the gallery, challenge fixed notions within Māori temporal ontology, revealing approaches to dynamic interdependence. Tuna are a juxtaposition to what it is to be ‘fixed’. Their fluid nature prompts the loosening of fixed ideas and systems. Yet, structured with freedom, they embody an inner knowing of when to migrate and return home.
Pātaka Wā is part of an ongoing research project exploring the elusive life cycle of tuna in relation to human connection and time-based art practice. Inviting the viewer into this repository of time to reflect on whakapapa, kaitiakitanga and ngā taiao, the work seeks to honour the mauri of tuna and the waters they inhabit.
The artist gratefully acknowledges and thanks Ngā Pae o Te Māramatanga for providing the Whakaaweawe Impact and Transformation Grant, which supports the exhibition and ongoing research of this work.
Glossary
Pātaka Wā: Time Repository
Tuna: Eel
Maramataka: Māori Lunar Calendar
Mauri: Life Force
Whakapapa: Genealogy
Kaitiakitanga: Guardianship, protection, and stewardship
Ngā taiao: Environments
14 January – 21 February 2026
Opening 14 January at 6:00pm
Pop Sediment
Elise McDermott
A kicked-up corner rug splattered with spots of acetone and nail polish. Piles of paper-cutting glossy teen mags and bowls of leftover spaghetti forks. Ticket stubs and polaroids and a full laundry basket, sticky and saturated, these abysmal bedroom plains are chunky and stocked of beaded necklaces, porcelain figurines and dog-eared novels. A pop-fanatic in a fantastical realm of party bliss and blues.
Like sediment, this collection of found parts and assemblages accumulate meaning and value through complex layers. Reminiscent of teenage and adolescent interiors, media and pop-culture materials converge and saturate, emerging as fragments of an expanded material language. Photographs, magazines and pieces of clothing carry signifiers of memories, experiences and desires. By deconstructing, de-functioning and recontextualising these theatrical forms, a strata of fictional identity and affect grows densely with fragile and fleeting attachment. Where material and memory intersect, curated arrangements of items provide structure to unexplainable and inconsistent narratives. While traces of use and degradation builds an archive of adolescence, one that is dramatic and sentimental; a temporal intersection of past and future.
Here, sentimentality operates as a suggestion. Collected and curated objects are assumably sentimental, unconfirmed in function, origin or classification. A domestic detritus as a narrative offers plausible values, forming as props with communicative agents that leave meaning unstable and unresolved. Meaning is built indirectly in the post-encounter, where comparison and relation is interrogated and understanding is created through shared experiences without being anchored to autobiography.
Nostalgia is increasingly packaged, aestheticised, and sold back to us. On a broader societal level, nostalgia has become a shared cultural condition. In contemporary life, it is consistently circulated through algorithms, trend revivals and economies, encouraging consumption and materially constructed moments. The youth bedroom mirrors this condition and reflects on how collective memory is assembled from fragments of second-hand images and inherited aesthetics.
Various Rooms: RM 1997 to 2022 (RM25)
Available now
Take a look inside here
RM25 is a non-exhaustive snapshot of RM, a selection of scans and screenshots from the archives presented in broadly chronological order.
It’s a book full of posters, photos, plans, invites, and a few letters and emails from the early rm3 days (and rm212, rm401, and rm103) through to the current form of RM.
RM25 is 226 pages, softcover, A5 size. Only 200 copies printed.
Priced at $40 per copy, with all proceeds going to RM.
Payment will be via bank transfer.
Shipping will be around $6 for orders placed within NZ.
For overseas orders, get in touch with us to confirm shipping costs.
Pick up a copy at RM, or order a copy here.
