Scirinz (a running sore): scripts of the body

Making Spaces is the talk series hosted by Elam School of Fine Arts. It aims to make space for artists and art professionals to share their practice and research.

In this talk, Sriwhana Spong will discuss encounters, chimes, and reorientations through recent and not-so-recent projects, having-seen-snake, The painter-tailor, and two films completed as part of her doctorate at Elam School of Fine Arts in 2021, A hook but no fish, and Interior Castle (a blueprint).

About the Speaker

Sriwhana Spong is an artist from Aotearoa New Zealand, living in London. Drawing on the particular and ecstatic practices of women mystics, Spong produces scripts of her body that document in various mediums the oscillations of distance and intimacy created by an approach toward another—most recently, a rat nesting outside her window; a newly discovered species of snake; a painting by her grandfather, the Balinese painter, I Gusti Made Rundu; and a twelfth-century Javanese poem. These encounters spark journeys where experiential knowledge, autobiography, fiction, and systematic research produce films, sculptures, performances, and reorientations.

Recent exhibitions include Live Art Commissions, The Roberts Institute of Art, London (2022); The 10th Walters Prize, Auckland Art Gallery, Trust and Confusion, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021); Honestly Speaking, Auckland Art Gallery (2020); castle-crystal, Edinburgh Arts Festival, Ida-Ida, Spike Island, Bristol (2019); A hook but no fish, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, and Pump House Gallery, London (2018); having-seen-snake, Michael Lett, Auckland (2017); and Oceanic Feeling with Maria Taniguchi, ICA, Singapore (2016).

In 2021, Spong completed a DocFA at Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland, which was awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Best Doctoral Thesis. In 2022, Spong will contribute a new work to the Istanbul Biennale.