Craft

Build a flower wall

Visit Gus Fisher Gallery and add to our ever-growing flower wall! Inspired by our current exhibition, The sentiment of flowers, we have transformed our corridor into a paper garden where you’re welcome to design your own flower creation for display.

Workshop

Candle-Making with Sybs

Saturday 29 April, 1-3PM

Join us for a special candle-making workshop with Sybs, a queer owned and operated small business in Tāmaki Makaurau. Sybs creates small-batch scented candles that are “queer, soy, handmade and horny”. In this two hour workshop, you’ll design and make your own scented candle that you can take home with you.

All materials provided.

Online talk and workshop

Hormone-Extraction Action with Mary MaggIC

Thursday 27 April, 7PM NZT

Join artist and researcher Mary Maggic for an evening of “fuzzy biological sabotage” as they present an online workshop via Zoom webinar as part of our current exhibition The sentiment of flowers. Hear from Mary about their practice of bio-hacking (a do-it-yourself biology) alongside short screenings and a live demonstration of their Estrofem Lab workshop hormone-extraction action.

Mary Maggic (b. 1991, Los Angeles) is a nonbinary Chinese-American artist and researcher working within the fuzzy intersections of body and gender politics and capitalist ecological alienations. Based in Vienna since 2017, Maggic frequently uses biohacking as a xeno-feminist practice of care that serves to demystify invisible lines of molecular biopower. Maggic is a recipient of the 2022 Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship, and they are a current member of the online network Hackteria: Open Source Biological Art and the Asian feminist collective Mai Ling.

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Workshop

Hapa-Zome for kids

Saturday 15 and 22 April, 10.30-11.30AM

Using the Japanese art of Hapa-Zome, meaning ‘leaf dye,’ bring your whānau to come create vibrant patterns by smashing the pigment onto fabric.

This one hour workshop is suitable for tamariki of all ages. All materials provided.

Workshop

Gen-Zine: A Do-It-Yourself Art Workshop for Rainbow Youth

Saturday 1 April, 10AM-2PM

Are you a LGBTQQIAP+ young person (aged 13 – 18) interested in art, writing, and DIY culture? In celebration of the new exhibit The sentiment of flowers, Gus Fisher Gallery invites rainbow youth and their allies to an introductory workshop on queer zine-making. Bring your friends and make some new ones, all while exploring the creative world of queer self-publishing. Together, we will learn about the history of zines in queer and other radical movements and participate in fun and easy bookmaking activities. Go home with your own personal mini-zine and help contribute to a group zine in just three hours! No experience or supplies are needed for this workshop, but feel free to bring your poetry, sketchbooks, and creative ideas with you.

Presented by Kim Snider (she/her)

Kim Snider (she/her) is a teacher and obsessive zine-collector from Toronto, Canada, where she teaches drama, creative writing, and gender studies. She recently moved to Tāmaki Makaurau to begin her PhD, which focuses on the role of the arts in supporting queer and trans youth.

Performance

Light Night 2023

Saturday 18 March, 7PM

For the Auckland Arts Festival’s Light Night 2023, the central city’s most iconic galleries are open late and playing host to a thrilling suite of exhibitions and curious delights. Gus Fisher Gallery will host a captivating performance by Dance Plant Collective as part of a series of pop performances across various galleries. Read more about Light Night 2023 here.

Gus Fisher Gallery will be open late from 4PM until 8.30PM.

No RSVP required.

Tour

Weekend Curator Tour

with coffee and donuts

Saturday 11 March, 2PM

The sentiment of flowers is an exhibition that embraces a non-binary approach to thinking about nature by encouraging us to abandon ideas of human exceptionalism in order to understand how queerness is an integral part of life for all living organisms. Join us for a tour led by Gus Fisher Gallery curator Lisa Beauchamp where she will guide you through the exhibition as it examines themes of queer ecologies.

Enjoy the tour with complimentary donuts and Kōkako coffee.

Tour

Local ecologies: Walking Tour

Saturday 4 March, 2PM

Join us for a walking tour of ecological sites of significance in Auckland’s city centre. Departing from Gus Fisher Gallery, we will explore local landscapes – their features, histories and potential for the future. We will be guided by the team from Aaiotanga Community Space, who work actively in the area promoting healthy networks, communities and ecologies for both human and non-human residents alike.

Film screening

Water makes us wet

Saturday 25 February, 4PM
Run time: 80 mins
Rating: 16+

Join us for a free film screening of Water Makes Us Wet by internationally acclaimed artists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, a couple and artistic duo who feature in our current exhibition The sentiment of flowers.

With a poetic blend of curiosity, humor, sensuality and concern, this film chronicles the pleasures and politics of H2O from an ecosexual perspective. Travel around California with Annie, a former sex worker, Beth, a professor, and their dog Butch, in their E.A.R.T.H. Lab mobile unit, as they explore water in the Golden State. Ecosexuality shifts the metaphor “Earth as Mother” to “Earth as Lover” to create a more reciprocal and empathetic relationship with the natural world. Along the way, Annie and Beth interact with a diverse range of folks including performance artists, biologists, water treatment plant workers, scholars and others, climaxing in a shocking event that reaffirms the power of water, life and love.

Artist talk

A R A P E T A and Laura Duffy

Saturday 11 February, 2PM

Join us for an opening weekend talk with artists a r a p e t a and Laura Duffy, both presenting new work as part of our current exhibition The sentiment of flowers. 

a r a p e t a is takatāpui artist of Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Whanaunga, Ngāti Porou and Muriwhenua descent researching the revival and preservation of Māori cloth making traditions through performance and time-based mediums. Laura Duffy is from Turanganui-a-Kiwa and has lived and worked in Te Whanganui-a-Tara for the past decade. She works between video, sculpture, and installation and is interested in exploring queer pleasure or joy derived from failure, error, and disgust.

Image left: Courtesy of Laura Duffy. Image right: Commissioned by The Art Paper, photography by Ophelia and Ryder Jones.

Exhibition opening

The sentiment of flowers

Thursday 9 February, 5.30PM

Join us as we celebrate the opening of The sentiment of flowers, an exhibition featuring work by leading Aotearoa and international artists that resonate with the theme of queer ecologies.

All are welcome.

Read more about the exhibition here.