Attention Studies is a Physics Room initiative where a group of creative practitioners were selected to participate in a collaborative environment to produce a year’s worth of serial publications. Here is my first of two contributions to No.3. I’ve also linked the whole issue below so you can enjoy the variety of skilled writers!
May 2026
On Friday the 10th of April three art exhibitions within two city blocks of each other opened at 5:30pm. There was a tide of gallery-goers greeting each other as they moved in opposite or concurrent directions towards one block or the other. ‘Are you doing all three?’ ‘Which direction are you going in?’ ‘How are the vibes there?’ ‘I don’t know if I’ll make it to all of them.’
The National, a dealer gallery specialising in contemporary jewellery, celebrated Corduroy Cowboy’s opening with a live band in Stetsons playing country bops that bubbas danced along to and the rest of us joyfully yelled at each other over. Jacquelyn Fang Greenbank’s chip-shaped bolo ties with metal peanut-shell tips alongside giant crinkle-cut potato chips on the floor were markedly jaunty. Standing near the canvas works produced conversational gems like ‘What’s this then?’ (confused). ‘A cheese grater’ (smugly). ‘Oh’ (pleased).
At CoCA Toi Moroki, a public contemporary gallery, Jess Nicholson’s Ka Maumahara te Uku (The Clay Remembers) began with friendly cheers, rattling ceramics and an organic marble run sending handmade orbs flying across the floor and their deployers after them. Pinned to the wall, Nicholson’s rectangular plates of uku bear sparkly found materials, the memory of their wholeness through the preservation of their separation, and the mark of the artist’s hands. Everywhere the give and grit of humans in relation refracts.
The Green Room at Toi Auaha, an artist-run initiative in a small outbuilding of the once-hostel, welcomed folks down the alley where the exhibition space door was noticeably shut. Further investigation was rewarded as you rounded the building to a side window. There, through holes cut into opaque black rubbish bags visitors smiled while trying to peep through the frosted glass to the video work, Emma Wallbanks’ Skin Flick, playing within.
Drinks and nibbles sustained the blood-sugar-depleting activity of improvisatory polyphonic socialising. Artists, other arts professionals, families and friends, the curious all seemed buoyed by playfulness. People ate, drank, laughed and the wave of relief that comes with the end of a work week for some, the end of a day, an install week, the private gestational period of a new body of work for others, washed over us. How necessary it all felt – the Stetsons, chips, music, curiosity and play.
Meg Doughty, Three Openings.
meg doughty 