My Response to Speaking Surfaces

The Speaking Surfaces exhibition is a creative showcase spanning across summer 2020, this exhibition aims to create a space where discussion, exhibitions, performative works, learning and encounters might emerge. The name speaking surfaces challenges how materials, and spatial arrangement may tell a story of past, present and future, and translate this throughencounters between the publics inhabiting the space.

Aiming to form communities within the space, the exhibition will take place in St Pauls Street Gallery, situated in the heart of AUT’s campus inside the Art and Design building, a site brimming with students and creatives. Being a student in Auckland, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the busyness and constant hum of city living, and opportunities for meaningful interaction with other students and creatives are rare in this chaotic lifestyle.

By questioning the publicness of St Paul's Street Gallery, I have considered how it may become adaptable and activated bypeople in order to benefit the exhibition. The proposed pavilion space is currently rather open, with little privacy. I am evolving the idea that perhaps the space becomes more intimate to allow for more meaningful interactions to flourish. A place which feels more inside than outside, where the atmosphere is felt and not seen. Compressing the public, creating closer proximity; a breath apart, and endorsing profound relations between the newly refined community within.