Strange Goods

Strange Goods offers a curated selection of multi-disciplinary arts books, publications and objects from across Aotearoa. Established in 2019 and located at 281 Karangahape Road in Tāmaki Makaurau, ours is a space for curious minds and a platform for artists, writers and makers to reimburse their time and labour.
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    Field Studies #9 (published by Bad News Books)Michael Mahne Lamb
    Hand made booklet featuring 20 photographs from Michael Mahne Lamb’s various travels around Europe, USA, NZ and Australia between 2015-2019. Printed on off white 80gsm stock. Dimensions are 195mm x 135mm, 24 pages, staple bound with bevelled edges. Edition of 100.
    Michael Mahne Lamb (b. 1988, NZ) is an artist currently living and working in Wellington. He holds a Bachelor of Design (Honours) from Massey University and is currently pursuing an MFA in photography at the University of Hartford. His first book Complements, published by Bad News Books in 2018, is an exploration of visual thinking. In particular, how images can stimulate the mind through the activation of amodal perception.
    $25Enquire to purchase
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    Thank You, OK. (published by Bad News Books)Megan Alexander
    Thank You, OK is an alternative travel diary, bringing together scanned notes and objects, iphone pictures, stills from camcorder videos, and 35mm colour photographs into a dizzying narrative of New Zealand-born Megan Alexander’s experience during a month long exchange in Xian, Beijing and Shanghai. This book serves as a visual thank you letter to the people and places that she encountered during her short but intense time in China, 2015.
    Megan Patricia Alexander is an artist currently living and working in Tokyo, Japan. She holds a Bachelor of Design (Honours) from Massey University and has since spent much of her time traveling and documenting her experiences. Her first book Thank You, Ok, published by Bad News Books in 2020, is an alternative travel diary of her time spent in Xian, Beijing and Shanghai on a month long exchange. Her book serves as a thank you letter to the people and places that she encountered during her short but intense time in China, 2015.
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    As Much Gold as an Ass Could Carry (published by split/fountain)Vivienne Plumb with Glenn Otto
    One endless summer when I was fourteen // I began to speak with a great arrogance // as wide as a river mouth, imagining I was // witty and charming and full of my own cream. Plumb creates through the written word, Otto through line; this book combines their two narratives. The image/text conflation moves between form over meaning, and meaning over form. Otto’s exuberant gestures interact with Plumb’s luminous humour, as if two performers are present on the page together. As Much Gold as an Ass Could Carry showcases Plumb’s poetry, fiction and drama, from a twenty-year literary career. Within these large, funny, barbed, affecting themes, the power of the social construct ­­– of what it means to be female ­­– is laid bare. Otto’s graphic wit ornaments and underwrites Plumb’s written traceries. This collaboration between artist and writer was initiated by split/fountain, as part of their ongoing engagement with publishing as a performative act.
    Vivienne Plumb is a playwright, poet and fiction writer. Her writing highlights the fantastic and miraculous in everyday experience. Her work has been widely anthologised and has been translated into Italian, Polish, Slovenian, Cantonese and Mandarin. Plumb has a BA and an MA from Victoria University in Wellington, and holds a Doctorate in Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Glenn Otto's practice employs painting and sculpture to address philosophic and anthropological questions concerning class structure and labour economies. He has an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland (2014), and his work has been shown at Fort Delta (Melbourne), Michael Lett (Auckland) and Artspace (Auckland).
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    distracted-reader #3: Time to Think Like a Mountain (published by split/fountain)Louise Menzies with Allan Smith
    Combining magazine fragments, archival images, interviews, collages and newly commissioned texts, Time to Think Like a Mountain documents New Zealand-based artist Louise Menzies’ distracted meanderings through one of the largest collections of underground and self-published material in the United States. Drawing directly on content from the Alternative Press Collection at the University of Connecticut, where she was artist in residence during 2014, this third issue of distracted-reader continues Menzies’ attention to the printed world of the historical fringe. Contributors Pat Arnott, Dan Arps, Elle Loui August, Jon Bywater, Amy Howden-Chapman, Tessa Laird, Barry Rosenberg, Allan Smith, Graham Stinnett, and George Watson provide contemporary responses to aspects of North American counterculture and its echoes in Aotearoa New Zealand. Publication design by Narrow Gauge. distracted-reader seeks readerly parkour through selected terrain of art and design. We see rhythmised literacy of image-text-concepts. We do thinking as making, and publication as speculative thought. With the general art monograph as coffee-table artefact, and university presses not funding experiment, our printed project marshals conjecture, scattered reflections, and textured locale. Less clarion call to a vanishing new, more through-lines with incidents and discernible increments, writing and thinking as marked-up copy, stuttered narration; material view.
    Louise Menzies’ cross-media practice often includes a range of materials presented within installed environments, as well as the use of other public platforms beyond that of an exhibition. Recent exhibitions include Gorgon, Malkin, Witch, Te Uru, Auckland (2017), Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Tonificantes Para Sublevar Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas – Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador), Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2017). In 2018, Menzies will be the Frances Hodgkins Fellow at the University of Otago, following residencies in Auckland, Sydney, Mexico City and Storrs (Connecticut), during which this publication originated. // Allan Smith teaches at Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland. He wrote on aspects of contemporary painting for Auckland Art Gallery’s exhibition Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show in 2015, curated Paul Cullen: Provisional Arrangements for Ilam Campus Gallery, University of Canterbury in 2016, and is currently working on a Don Driver exhibition for Hastings Gallery in 2018. He has a particular interest in tracking parallels between the creaking architecture of grand philosophical systems, mercurial capitalism and its crises, and art forms which mimic such elaborate instabilities.
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    Dirt (published by GLORIA Books)Gemma Walsh, Katie Kerr
    Dirt is an experimental cookbook that digs into the relationship between food and words. Twelve earthy recipes from chef Gemma Walsh are accompanied by a collection of stories, poems and conversations from some of New Zealand’s contemporary writers. Contributors include Courtney Sina Meredith, Lana Lopesi, Rosabel Tan, Dominic Huey, Vanessa Crofskey, Natasha Matila-Smith, Owen Connors, Liam Jacobson, Amy Weng, Reem Musa, Gabi Lardies and Sam Walsh. Edited and designed by Katie Kerr.
    Gemma Walsh is a chef and food writer based in Australia. Katie Kerr is a designer who is interested in exploring alternative structures of design practice. Her research-led practice revolves around the multidisciplinary production of experimental paperback books. In opposition to the ‘print is dead’ argument, she believes that books take on an important role in the post-digital context—the physical object creates methods of distribution that disrupts the digital echo-chamber, where analytics are lessening our chances of discovering something unexpected. Katie lives and works in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.
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    Still Looking Good (published by GLORIA Books)Alice Connew
    Still Looking Good is a triadic collaboration between siblings Oliver Connew (dancer/choreographer) and Alice Connew (photographer) that brings together dance, sound and a visual aesthetic that are drawn from and reference pervasive socio-political forces that organise modern human activity, as understood by the artists. Originally presented by Oliver as a performative piece titled Things That Move Me, Oliver invited Alice to aid him in reimagining the concepts as a short film and Still Looking Good was born. The book was initiated by Alice and concludes the collaboration.
    Alice Connew is a photographer whose work transpires from a seemingly unconscious stream of intangible visual connections which occur throughout quotidian life. These links often show themselves at a later—and usually unexpected—time. She believes the photobook is an art form. Alice lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
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    Wishing Well // Ma‘u Pe Kai (Published by Enjoy)Wai Ching Chan, Matavai Taulangau
    Wishing Well // Ma‘u Pe Kai is published alongside solo exhibitions by Wai Ching Chan and Matavai Taulangau held at Enjoy in August 2019. These were the first exhibitions at Enjoy’s new galleries at 211 Left Bank, and the first time in our institutional history that we’ve been able to programme two solo exhibitions concurrently. Accordingly, the publication unfolds as two sets of responses; developed separately, but anchored, like both Chan’s and Taulangau’s projects, in questions surrounding migration, labour, cultural identity and its continuity. Part of an ongoing research project, Wishing Well was developed by Wai Ching Chan following two knotting workshops held at Enjoy in May 2019, during which the artist led participants in learning three traditional Chinese knots 中国结. These events were an invitation to make conversation, to consider the symbolism of these knots and to engage in broad dialogue with others on the relationship between tauiwi and tangata whenua in Aotearoa New Zealand. Chan’s section of the publication includes new texts by Arapeta Ashton, Hēmi Kelly and Kirsten Wong, alongside documentation of Chan’s workshops and Wishing Well. Describing his practice as part of an ongoing effort to “reestablish his connection with [his] culture,” Matavai Talangau’s exhibition Ma‘u Pe Kai documents three kumala harvests: one by the Tongan community in Okaihau in Northland, one by the artist’s mother in nearby Kaikohe, and one by the artist in Tāmaki Makaurau. Taulangau’s section includes new writing from Simone Kaho and John Vea, an extended conversation between Taulangau and filmmaker Vea Mafile‘o, alongside documentation of the exhibition.
    Wai Ching Chan’s research revolves around defending, embracing and respecting differences in culture. Recent projects include: Fluid Borders 流动的边界, Audio Foundation, Tāmaki Makaurau; A temple, a commons and a cave, MEANWHILE, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington ; The River Remains; ake tonu atu, Artspace, Tāmaki Makaurau; What We Do in the Shadows, TONENTON Artspace, Hamburg; BITE ME- Decolonising the Diet, Lowtide Studio, Tāmaki Makaurau, Rabbit on the Moon, Hapori vol. 6, 157 Symonds Street, Tāmaki Makaurau. Matavai Taulangau has a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honors from AUT University. Recent exhibitions include Salt, Tacit Gallery, Kirikiriroa Hamilton (2018), This time of useful consciousness, The Dowse Art Museum, Te Awakairangi Lower Hutt (2017), On the Grounds, Starkwhite, Tāmaki Makaurau (2017), Ward 3 with Ary Jansen, RM, Tāmaki Makaurau (2016), Offstage 7, Artspace, Tāmaki Makaurau (2016).
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    Look out, Fred! (published by Enjoy)Evangeline Riddiford Graham
    Look out, Fred! revisits Evangeline Riddiford Graham’s exhibition of the same title, held at Enjoy in April 2017. Considering the interplay between contemporary myth-making and classical texts, Riddiford Graham’s exhibition interrogated archetypal characters and modes of storytelling. Drawing on an atmospheric and suggestive script, Riddiford Graham worked with two voice actors to develop spoken word audio pieces questioning the relationship between the cowboy ‘Fred’, and his Echo or alter-ego. The publication, designed by Ella Sutherland, translates this script into a playful typographic score that explores language as material, and blurs distinctions between performance, notation and document. Accompanied by essays by Akil Kirlew and Sophie Davis, Look out, Fred! also includes a newly commissioned photographic series by Tim Wagg, developed in response to the exhibition.
    Evangeline Riddiford Graham is an artist and writer living in New York, where she recently completed an MFA in creative writing at The New School. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks La Belle Dame Avec Les Mains Vertes (Compound Press, 2019) and Ginesthoi (hard press, 2017). Her upcoming and recent exhibitions include hubris ~ humility (Earlid, 2020), Party Line (Te Tuhi, 2019), La Belle Dame Avec Les Mains Vertes (RM Gallery, 2018), Marabar Caves (Gus Fisher Gallery, 2017), and Look out, Fred! (Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, 2017). Evangeline holds a BA-BFA from the University of Auckland and an MA from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
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    The sea brought you here (published by Enjoy)Quishile Charan, Salome Tanuvasa
    Published on the occasion of the exhibition Namesake, The sea brought you here brings together newly commissioned responses alongside found photographs, phone snapshots, sketches, texts and previous work by Quishile Charan and Salome Tanuvasa. Elaborating on the concerns of both artists, Hanahiva Rose employs the metaphors of threads and waves to connect the practices of Charan and Tanuvasa in her essay “A Pacific Diaspora: how might we trace the movement?” while Temporary Vanua: Decolonisation and textile making, a revised text by Charan, contextualises her approach to textile-making. Shorter snippets of text by Tanuvasa also give insight to her working process. Finally, Transcribed records an informal conversation between two friends attempting to unpack the way the language of ‘decolonisation’ is currently being employed.
    SALOME TANUVASA is a Samoan-Tongan artist based in Auckland. She completed her Masters in Fine Arts at Elam in 2014, followed by a Diploma in Secondary Teaching. Salome’s work crosses a variety of mediums including moving image, drawing, photography and sculpture. Salome’s work is about her immediate surroundings and often reflects the environments she is in at that time, drawing attention to wider issues among New Zealand-based Pacific people. // QUISHILE CHARAN is an artist of Indo-Fijian heritage living and working in Aotearoa New Zealand. Charan uses traditional modes of textile making to reflect upon the landscape of indentured labour and its ongoing post-colonial effects on the Indo-Fijian community. // HANAHIVA ROSE comes from the islands of Ra’iātea and Huahine and the people of Te Atiawa, Ngāi Tahu, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira. A graduate of Victoria University’s Art History department, she is currently based in New Plymouth, where she is Assistant Curator Contemporary Art and Collections at the Govett-Brewster Art Museum.
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    Goodbye Turmeric LatteMigrant Zine Collective
    Living in diaspora, the health and beauty practices of people-of-colour have often been questioned and made fun of until they catch on to become popular Western fads. Herbs, spices and remedies used by our ancestors are then co-opted and sold at a ridiculous profit margin at your local organic store. "Goodbye Turmeric Latte” is a zine collated by Jasmin Singh @jasminkb and Helen Yeung @chinesgoth which aims to reclaim these health and beauty methods that our families and ancestors have used and shared with us, practices that we may continue today.
    Migrant Zine Collective is an activist-based zine collective aiming to amplify, celebrate and share the voices of migrants of colour in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The collective aims to open up a space where people of colour are able to discuss and unpack topics such as identity, feminism, racism, decolonisation and inequality, in a safe and accessible manner, and connect individuals through art practices, zine workshops and community events. http://www.migrantzinecollective.com/ @migrantzinecollective
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    Memories Of Mercury PlazaMigrant Zine Collective
    In 2019, Mercury Plaza closed its doors to make way for Karangahape Station as part of the City Rail Link project by Auckland Council. Mercury Plaza has shared significance for many migrants of colour who arrived in Aotearoa in the mid-nineties, and continues to act as a reminder of home for newer migrants, with an array of restaurants which are reminiscent of street food stalls in Asia. In the light of this, Migrant Zine Collective collated “Memories of Mercury Plaza”, a zine to archive memories of the space.
    Migrant Zine Collective is an activist-based zine collective aiming to amplify, celebrate and share the voices of migrants of colour in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The collective aims to open up a space where people of colour are able to discuss and unpack topics such as identity, feminism, racism, decolonisation and inequality, in a safe and accessible manner, and connect individuals through art practices, zine workshops and community events. http://www.migrantzinecollective.com/ @migrantzinecollective
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    Have You Ever Been With An Asian Woman Before?Migrant Zine Collective
    Have you ever been with an Asian woman before?” was curated by Helen Yeung @chinesegoth in collaboration with Gemishka Chetty @chetty_g and Aiwa Pooamorn @mama_aiwa for an interactive art installation for First Thursdays in July, 2019. This zine aims to offer a space for Asian women to release their pent up anger on experiences of being exoticised, fetishised and treated as the Other, and celebrate their unruly, bold and unapologetic voices.
    Migrant Zine Collective is an activist-based zine collective aiming to amplify, celebrate and share the voices of migrants of colour in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The collective aims to open up a space where people of colour are able to discuss and unpack topics such as identity, feminism, racism, decolonisation and inequality, in a safe and accessible manner, and connect individuals through art practices, zine workshops and community events. http://www.migrantzinecollective.com/ @migrantzinecollective
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    Snack Zine ClubMigrant Zine Collective
    Food plays an important social and cultural role for many migrants-of-colour. It is a way in which we interact with our families, show love to the people around us, teach people about our cultures, and how we remember our homes. Snack Zine Club was established by Helen Yeung @chinesegoth and Eda Tang @eda_tang of Migrant Zine Collective, as a way of building solidarity and bringing together migrant communities in their love for snacks.
    Migrant Zine Collective is an activist-based zine collective aiming to amplify, celebrate and share the voices of migrants of colour in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The collective aims to open up a space where people of colour are able to discuss and unpack topics such as identity, feminism, racism, decolonisation and inequality, in a safe and accessible manner, and connect individuals through art practices, zine workshops and community events. http://www.migrantzinecollective.com/ @migrantzinecollective
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