Media release – 12 October, 2017
Surplus Reality
Nova Paul
Exhibition Preview: Friday 13 October at 5.30pm
Exhibition Runs: Saturday 14 October – Sunday 19 November 2017
Artist talk: Saturday 14 October at 11am
The Week Before Spring (video still), Nova Paul, 2017, 16mm film to HD transfer. Courtesy of the artist.
For Nova Paul’s second exhibition at The Physics Room in 2017 she has produced a new 16mm film, The Week Before Spring. Over the past 12 months, Paul has participated in The Physics Room’s residency programme where she has engaged in an
overarching research enquiry regarding self-determinacy and healing.
Paul’s project initially focused on the now defunct addiction programme at Queen Mary Hospital in Hanmer Springs, North
Canterbury. The successful treatment programme was based on a holistic approach to healthcare including the use of
psychodrama, which focussed on accessing and activating the imagination as a vital aspect of the healing process.
Paul’s relationship to this project changed dramatically after a serious accident earlier this year, which brought the
personal to bear on the political as she navigated her way through a neoliberal healthcare system that she was initially
critiquing.
The Week Before Spring includes sound composed, produced, and played by Bic Runga and Kody Nielson.
Nova Paul teaches studio moving image and art theory in the Visual Arts Department at AUT. Recent exhibitions and screenings
include Props and Gesture (2016) at The Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Te Wai o Te Ora in ‘All Lines Converge’ (2016) at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, and Still Light (2015) shown at London Film Festival Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt,
Berlin (2016). Her film-making practice draws from early cinema, experimental film histories and fourth wave film
discourse to consider the poetics and politics of place, self-determinacy and the image and the role of story telling in
talking back to neo-liberal hegemonies. Nova Paul is of Te Uriroroi and Te Parawhau /Ngāpuhi descent. She lives in
Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland.
For more information, see our website or please contact:
Hope Wilson
Assistant Curator
--
Opening soon:
Surplus Reality Part II, Nova Paul
+
Dossier: An incomplete archival exhibition celebrating two decades of The Physics Room
Exhibition preview: Friday 13 October, 5.30pm
Exhibitions run: Saturday 14 October - Sunday 19 November 2017
The Physics Room is generously supported by Creative NZ, Christchurch City Council, Three Boys Brewery, Signtech, Resene
Paints, and The Crater Rim
ends