Gas is a state of matter that is never still, nor does it remain constant. Despite being low in viscosity and density
compared to liquids and solids it can contract and expand easily depending on temperatures and atmospheric pressures, as
well as spread homogeneously within its space of containment.
What can the notion of ‘nonlocality’ mean for the state of a gas? What might it mean to be in two places at the same
time? What can it do for our psycho-political states? How can it be owned or contained and whose gas is it anyway? Gas asks, what can happen to matter in relation to two sets of white walls simultaneously?
Gas is a video work that will be installed across two locations simultaneously: 209 Tuam Street, and our new gallery space
at 49-59 Worcester Boulevard.
Gas I will be shown at 209 Tuam Street, 18-28 January
Gas II will be shown at 49-59 Worcester Boulevard, 18 January-18 February.
At the conclusion of the Tuam Street exhibition, both works will be shown together at Worcester Boulevard.
Gas is the final instalment of Harvey’s year-long project, Nonlocality, which has explored architectural, geological, geographic, and political ideas in relation to quantum mechanics whilst
responding to certain exhibitions at The Physics Room throughout 2017. Nonlocality has been developed in consultation and collaboration with physicist Shaun Hendy.
Text: Gas I: Harvey, Gas II: Harvey and Hendy
Filming, sound & editing: Harvey
Voices: Harvey (Tuam Street), Hendy (Worcester Boulevard)
Mark Harvey is a New Zealand-based artist mostly working in performance and video drawing on political, psychological and social
approaches and physical endurance. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries at The
University of Auckland and has a PhD from AUT University in related practice. He has recently published a book on a
sample of 14 years of his practice titled Play Book (Index Design and Publishing).
Shaun Hendy is a physicist and Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini. His recent book Silencing Science reflects on the value of science
and how it has been so often silenced when it comes to public policy. He served as Deputy Director of the MacDiarmid
Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology from 2008-2012 and as President of the New Zealand Association of
Scientists from 2011-2013. He has won a number of awards, including the Prime Minister's Science Media Communication
Prize and ANZIAM's E. O. Tuck Medal. In 2012 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Hendy is a
Professor of Physics at the University of Auckland.