Having It All, All, All

Having it all, all, all

21 February – 10 May 2025, Gus Fisher Gallery

Internationally renowned female artists showcased in exhibition at Gus Fisher Gallery

Experience ground-breaking artworks by Yoko Ono, Ana Mendieta, Pipilotti Rist and more

Ana Mendieta (Cuba/USA), Yoko Ono (Japan/USA), Howardena Pindell (USA), Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland), Martha Rosler (USA), Christa Schadt (Canada), Janice Tanaka (USA), Hannah Wilke (USA), Nil Yalter (Turkey/France)

Having it all, all, all brings together international artists whose work has been pivotal for the re-evaluation of female subjectivity in art.

At a time when the autonomy of individual bodies remains subject to debate and co-optation by oppressive political agendas, we consider the legacies of seminal works that have contributed to a dialogue of reclamation and empowerment.

Spanning the 1960s to 1990s, this exhibition of select video and performance art delves into the activism and identity politics associated with Second Wave Feminism and its critics. Bringing together key senior artists from America, Europe and the Middle East, Having it all, all, all provides insight into the practices of nine pioneering female artists whose work and commentary invites renewed attention through a contemporary lens.

The exhibition is the first time that many of these artists will be shown in Aotearoa New Zealand.

A noteworthy inclusion is Yoko Ono’s ground-breaking performance Cut Piece, marking sixty years since she performed it at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1965. Originally conceived as a protest against war and the catastrophic atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Cut Piece is an exploration of cultural and gendered violence. By addressing the vulnerability that accompanies female gendered experience, Ono enacts a resilience against the violence, objectification and subjugation of women worldwide. Ono’s message of resilience and peace remains piercingly relevant to our contemporary times.

The exhibition invites an opportunity to consider the strategies used by artists associated with the activism and identity politics of the Feminist movement to counter patriarchal culture. A centring of the body was often employed by female artists to destabilise voyeuristic viewing, while others used parody and humour to dismantle what they believed were ingrained roles for women. Conceived in 1975, Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen is considered a cornerstone of Feminist art with her parody of television cooking demonstrations hinting at the often-invisible domestic labour typically assigned to women by default.

Pipilotti Rist’s experimental video Ever is over all (1997), which famously inspired Beyonce’s video Hold Up (2016), is the most recent work in the exhibition. Rist’s work draws on the history of feminist video art to explore notions of innocence and anger in an empowering way. Importantly, the exhibition also addresses the divisions within Second Wave Feminism with Howardena Pindell’s Free, White and 21 (1980), which traces her own experiences of racial and social biases coming of age as a black woman in the United States.

From Nil Yalter’s fearless exploration of women’s erotic desire in the early 1970s, to Hannah Wilke’s performalist self-portraits and Ana Mendieta’s spiritual earth art, Having it all, all, all is a snapshot into a critical period of change.

A full public programme will accompany the exhibition.

Join us for the opening event on Friday 21 February, from 5pm.

About Gus Fisher Gallery:

Gus Fisher Gallery is a centre for contemporary art in Tāmaki Makaurau and a project space for artists. As the flagship art gallery for Waipapa Taumata Rau/The University of Auckland, Gus Fisher Gallery advocates for experimental exhibition making by being a platform for new opportunities and enabling an extension of artistic practice. Gus Fisher Gallery’s programme comprises in-house initiated exhibitions and a public programme of events for creative and diverse communities. Housed in a 1934 heritage building, Gus Fisher Gallery shows a strength in artists’ moving image consistent with its building’s pioneering broadcasting history.

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