ARTPOST #19
an audience with the Queen
11 August 2020
Queen Victoria (2013), by Jeremy Leatinu’u, has opened this week in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s Rear Window Gallery (located on Moray Place).
Jeremy Leatinu’u invites us to join him in reconsidering Aotearoa New Zealand’s colonial history, specifically through the Queen Victoria memorials in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Through a series of site-specific performances, Leatinu’u makes use of a ladder as a deliberate conceptual, symbolic and conversational device. Sitting face-to-face with these statues he highlights and challenges their elevated representative status, asking us to consider the position, relevance and histories of these statues in the contemporary moment.
Queen Victoria is screening from 10 August – 11 October 2020.
Noho ora mai, Joanna Osborne
Curatorial Intern, Dunedin Public Art Gallery
(The DPAG Curatorial Internship is generously supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa)
[image: Jeremy Leatinu’u, Queen Victoria, (video still) video. Courtesy of the artist.]
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