Talk

On difficult histories

with Avril Bell & Rowan Light

Thursday 9 October, 5.30-7pm

Join Sociologist Avril Bell and Historian Rowan Light for a conversation about the nature of difficult histories in Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on their respective research practices to consider major historical events including Gallipoli/Çanakkale and the New Zealand Wars, Bell and Light will explore what makes a history ‘difficult’, the importance of understanding them and how they respond to them in their work as tangata Tiriti.

This talk will be held in The University of Auckland Clock Tower Room 032. This conversation will be recorded with a transcript published on Gus Fisher Gallery’s website at a later date.

Avril Bell is an Honorary Associate Professor in Sociology at Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland and teaches treaty-based professional development courses for university staff. Her main research interests are in the field of settler colonialism. She has written extensively on what it means to be a Pākehā New Zealander, and on Māori-Pākehā relations and histories. Her book Relating Indigenous and Settler Identities: Beyond Domination (Palgrave, 2014) explores settler colonial logics and dynamics in Australia, Canada, the USA, as well as Aotearoa New Zealand. She is also the author of Becoming Tangata Tiriti (2024, Auckland University Press), based on conversations with twelve non-Māori New Zealanders about their work in support of Māori and te Tiriti o Waitangi. She is currently working on a critical settler family history.

Rowan Light (Pākehā, Ngai te Tiriti) is a historian and Senior Lecturer at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland where he teaches Aotearoa New Zealand histories. Since 2021, he has also been project curator at Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, researching the New Zealand Wars collection. In 2024, he co-curated Atarau: Stories of the New Zealand Wars with Nigel Borell, with whom he also co-edited a collection of essays under the same title (to be released in October, 2025). His research explores how communities and societies remember and commemorate war and violence, reflected in previous books such as Anzac Nations: The Legacy of Gallipoli in New Zealand and Australia, 1965-2015 (OUP, 2022) and Why Memory Matters: Remembered histories and the politics of the shared past (BWB, 2024). He lives in central Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland with his partner.

Talk

On Living Halls

with Fiona Jack & Bill McKay

Saturday 1 November, 2-3pm

Living Halls was a collaborative archival project by artist Fiona Jack that engaged with ‘living memorials’ built following WWII, after the New Zealand Government offered subsidies for war memorials to be constructed as utilitarian community spaces. First presented at The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in 2010, this project comprised paintings, drawings, honour boards, documents, database, photos, stories and audio recordings detailing the social, architectural and art histories of the War Memorial Halls of Aotearoa.

Join Jack in conversation with Living Halls contributor Bill McKay, for a discussion of the project through the lens of the architecture of memory. This conversation will be recorded with a transcript published on Gus Fisher Gallery’s website at a later date.

Fiona Jack is an artist and educator based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. She is Head of School and Associate Professor at Elam School of Fine Arts, Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland, where she has taught since 2007. Fiona’s artistic practice ranges from large-scale public commissions to collaborative projects grounded in social exchange. She draws on recognizable visual and textual languages to examine the systems, social movements, and politics of representation within spaces that hold collective memory.

Bill McKay is an author, historian and lecturer at the School of Architecture and Planning at Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland. He is also an architectural critic primarily in Architecture New Zealand and a commentator with his own architecture slot on the country’s national public radio. His most recent books are Urban Aotearoa: The Future for our Cities (2024, Bridget Williams Books) and Worship: A History of New Zealand Church Design (2015, Random House New Zealand). He is currently working on several projects including studying for a PhD on war memorial community centres.

The Changing Room

Wood carving workshop

with Chevron Hassett

Saturday 22 November, 1-4pm

Join exhibiting artist Chevron Hassett (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Rongomaiwāhine, Ngāti Kahungunu, Pākehā) for a wood carving workshop where participants will learn introductory skills under guidance from the artist. Using salvaged totara floorboards as an extension of Hassett’s sculptural installation in The Changing Room, this hands-on workshop will explore how to engrave and stain wood, allowing participants to take a piece of the exhibition Aroha Ki Te Tangata home with them.

Tickets are priced at $40 (waged) and $25 (unwaged). Registrations open 18 October. All materials provided.