Winter Lecture: Running out of Breath

Join artist, poet, curator and cultural commentator Rosanna Raymond for January’s online Winter Lecture as she explores working with Pacific collections in museums.

Roseanna will trace her journey as an artist working inside the museum through a series of poetry and reflections. These are gleaned from her thesis Conser.VĀ.tion| Acti.VĀ.tion – Museums, the body and Indigenous Moana art practice. The study explored the performative body based on the Samoan concept of vā (reciprocal and sustained relational space). It also developed tools the conservation of Moana collections found in museums and shaped current museum practice.

In this online lecture, Roseanna will illustrate the highs and lows of working with her cultural belongings inside the museum space using a mix of poetry, moving image, photographs as well as recent projects.

Speaker: Rosanna Raymond, aka Sistar S’pacific, is an innovator of the contemporary Pasifika art scene. She is a driving force behind Pacific performance arts, mentor, curator of Pacific and Maori visual arts. She is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, founding member of the SaVĀge K’lub and one of the founding members of the Pacific arts collective the Pacific Sisters. Over the past twenty years, Rosanna’s activities have made her a notable producer of, and commentator on, contemporary Pacific Island culture. She specialises in working within museums and higher education institutions.

Rosanna has achieved international renown for her performances, installations, body adornment, and spoken word. A published writer and poet, her works are held by museums and private collectors throughout the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Aotearoa. Raymond is an Honorary Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology and Institute of Archaeology at University College London and a former Chesterdale Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (2017). She was the Pacific Artist in Residence at Government House (2017) and is currently a researcher for the AUT Marsden funded project Vā Moana.