In Relation is an exhibition about the live performances of Peter Roche & Linda Buis undertaken between 1979 and 1985. Given these were unrepeatable actions with only a handful of people in attendance, their reconstruction draws exclusively on the surviving archive of photographs, film and video footage, drawings, texts, artist-publications, and published and unpublished commentary. This raises many questions about what now constitutes the work, especially as we realise that Roche & Buis used the camera as a structuring element in the execution of their work and as a key vehicle for the production of its afterlife.

Christina Barton will be joined by four invested experts: contemporary art curator Natasha Conland, writer and curator Wystan Curnow, writer and curator specialising in Moana art, Ioana Gordon-Smith, and artist and educator Shannon Te Ao in a conversation addressing the issues raised by performance art, including how the site of meaning shifts between live action and the camera, the archive and the exhibition, and the differences between performance in the 1980s and now.

Natasha Conland is Senior Curator Global Contemporary Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. She also writes for a number of contemporary arts journals and catalogues in the Asia Pacific region. Natasha has diverse interests including art in public space and the dissemination of the historic avant-garde. In 2018 she curated Groundswell: Avant Garde Auckland: 1971–79 showcasing the performance and new media embraced by a 1970s experimental art scene in Auckland, and in 2022 curated Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal’s presentation at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki of the performance Yet Untitled (2013). This is the first acquisition of a live work for the Gallery’s collection.

Wystan Curnow is a writer, poet, and curator based in Auckland. Moving freely between literature and the arts, theory and practice, Wystan’s keen observations in the form of long essays, reviews and reports have provided essential, in-depth commentary on New Zealand contemporary art since 1970. His collection of art writings, The Critic’s Part (AAG, IMA, THWUP, 2014), was awarded the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand’s gold medal for best collection (2015). Wystan was a first-hand witness of a number of Peter Roche & Linda Buis’s performances, recording his responses in notebooks, extracts from which feature in the exhibition In Relation: Performance Works by Peter Roche & Linda Buis 1979–1985.

Ioana Gordon-Smith (Sāmoan/Pākehā) is an arts writer and curator with a commitment to Moana arts practices and their histories. Ioana has held roles at Artspace Aotearoa, Objectspace, Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery and Pātaka Art + Museum and was assistant curator of Yuki Kihara’s exhibition in the New Zealand Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and co-curator of the international Indigenous triennial, Naadohbii: To Draw Water in Canada also in 2022 . In 2013 she curated a performance series produced by Jeremy Leatinu’u and Kalisolaite ‘Uhila commissioned by Tautai, and has written on the performance and video art of Christopher Ulutupu. Her writing has been published widely and she is also the co-founder and co-editor of Marinade: Aotearoa Journal of Moana Art and a trustee for Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, Wellington.

Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) is an artist and educator whose work crosses performance, photographic and video art practices. Shannon’s recent output has centred around video and photographic image installation exploring themes of movement and agency. Shannon was awarded the Walters Prize in 2016 with his work two shoots that stretch far out, (2013–14), and has completed commissions for the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA Brisbane (2022) and 13th Gwangju Biennale: Minds Rising Spirits Turning (2021), and presented solo exhibitions at REMAI Modern, Saskatoon, (2020); Oakville Galleries, Toronto (2020), Te Uru, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2021) and Tauranga Art Gallery (2023).