Edwards + Johann On the Mutability of Things #15 2019. Drawing and watercolour on photograph. Courtesy of the artists
Edwards + Johann Concretions – pink 2020. Mixed media on c-type photograph. Courtesy of the artists
This exhibition is now closed
Transformation, unpredictability and magic happen when unrelated worlds meet.
Ōtautahi Christchurch-based artistic collaborators Victoria Edwards and Ina Johann bring recent works into conversation with a new installation in this strange and luminous exhibition, exploring the magic that happens when unrelated worlds connect and transform. Drawing on their recent artist residency at Sutton House, the exhibition considers how new experiences, ideas and materials can both disrupt and enrich what has come before. In keeping with the pair’s inter-disciplinary and explorative practice, Mutabilities—propositions to an unknown universe combines photography, drawing, collage and sculpture to deliver an intriguing and transporting art experience.
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Date:
14 September 2024 – 16 February 2025 -
Exhibition number:
1168
Related
Exhibition
Edwards+Johann: Rebels, Knights and Other Tomorrows
23 August – 2 November 2014
Combining vividly imagined photographs with sculptural elements, Christchurch-based collaborative duo Edwards+Johann present an enigmatic and playful installation laced with tension and possibility.
Director's Foreword
Director’s Foreword
As I write this it’s a cold and gloomy Ōtautahi Christchurch day and the Gallery is abuzz with a wide range of visitors, family groups and children, taking part in our school holiday workshops and programmes, and filling our spaces with activity, excitement and laughter. It’s a lovely warm place to be on a grey day. Hopefully by the time this Bulletin arrives in your hand there’s a sense that spring is arriving, trees are greening up and the days are longer once again. By then we will have recently opened our major new collection focused exhibition to replace Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection.
Interview
A Space for Conversation
Ōtautahi Christchurch-based artists Victoria Edwards and Ina Johann have worked in artistic collaboration as Edwards + Johann since 2007. They take an interdisciplinary approach to art- making, combining photography, drawing, collage, performance, video and sculpture.
Curator Felicity Milburn spoke with the pair shortly after their month-long residency at Sutton House, during which they prepared sculptures for their upcoming Gallery exhibition. Edwards + Johann: Mutabilities—propositions to an unknown universe will combine these with other works made across the last five years to investigate ideas of response to place, connection and transformation. All of the works carry the indelible resonance of the unforgettable, and tragically unpredictable, geothermal environment of Whakaari White Island, which Edwards + Johann visited in 2018, prior to its devastating 2019 eruption.
Interview
Thieves in the attic
An unlikely domesticity pervades the small city studio. Drawings and photographed collages are bulldogclipped and hung against the wall. Odd-shaped articles are crammed into stacks of Dole banana boxes. Large cardboard cartons, colour-coded in capital letters – 'BLACK COSTUMES'; 'RED' – are piled up near the ceiling. The props, costumes, photographs and books, the disparate resources that feed into the free-ranging eclecticism that defines the playful, performative and exhaustively explorative collaborations of Edwards + Johann, are boxed up and put away.
Today, I am told, is talking day.