Guy Ngan: Whakamāui Recovery Positions by Mark Harvey

Whakamāui: Recovery Positions are a series of actions, installations and events proposed and conducted by artist and academic Mark Harvey in collaboration with others, that consider cultural and political tensions and disunity contextualised by the work of Guy Ngan. It frames the role of public art in local situations by a number of research performances that hope to recover discourse that has remained hidden in the face of processes of Pākehā colonialism.

While Guy Ngan’s work can be seen as a series of utopian visions for a unified peaceful and inclusive Aotearoa New Zealand, from his self-identified position as a Pacific Chinese artist, what is the cultural position that artists can speak from? If we consider public art and its spaces, what are the ideological state apparatuses employed through these?

Mark Harvey is an Aotearoa/New Zealand based artist, of Pākehā/Māori heritage who works with a range of approaches, especially performance and video. His work often engages with notions of promises of productive idiocy, physical endurance, duration, social psychology, social justice, politics, climate change and various perspectives in ecology. He has presented in a range of international contexts such as the 55th Venice Biennale for Visual Arts, ANTI Contemporary Art Festival, Finland, New Performance Turku Festival, Finland, Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Norway, ZET, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Performance Space, Sydney, Climarts Festival, Melbourne, as well as local galleries including The Physics Room, City Gallery, Te Uru, Te Tuhi, Govett Brewster, Blue Oyster and Enjoy. He holds a PhD (AUT University) and is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Arts & Industries at The University of Auckland.