Auckland Pride Festival comes with a wealth of visual art - and some exhibitions are already open. Implicated and Immune Michael Lett Gallery, 312 K’ Road Now till 28 February This major exhibition focuses on artistic responses to HIV/AIDS, both historically and contemporary, as well as offering broader meditations on desire, loss and the body. The exhibition partially reprises the first Auckland exhibition to explicitly respond to the epidemic. Implicated and Immune: Artists’ responses to AIDS took place in late 1992 at the Fisher Gallery (now Te Puhi) in Pakuranga. This landmark exhibition featured work from artists including Jack Body, Fiona Clark, L.Budd, Richard Kileen and Fiona Paddington. The new exhibition revisits these artists as well as drawing on the work by established artists like Billy Apple, Jacqueline Fraser, Giovanni Intra and Douglas Wright. Younger practitioners are also represented with new pieces created specifically for the show by Simon Denny, Imogen Taylor and Russ Flatt. Two public conversations will be held in the gallery during the exhibition. Saturday 31 Jan 1pm: artists Ruth Watson and Trevor Fry discuss the work of important gay artist Grant Linghard, whose final major work Swan Song will be exhibited in Implicated and Immune. Saturday 14 February at 1pm: curator Ron Brownson and artist Fiona Clark will discuss Clarks seminal work “Living with AIDS.” ‘O lā ‘āitu lāitiiti We have always been here Studio One,Toi Tu - 1 Ponsonby Road 4 – 11 February (opening event 3 February at 5.30PM) Tautai Artist in Residence 2015 Leuli Eshraghi will discuss his and wider Pacific arts practices in Australia with interdisciplinary artist Yuki Kihara before launching his exhibition ‘O Lā ‘Āitu Lāititi in Studio One Toi Tu, at the Opening. Leuli draws on gabbeh carpet and siapo barkcloth aesthetics to reinscribe the cultural memory of his family, and connect with mark making and spirituality from across Tranzamin and Samoa. His works communicate grief and loss of near ancestors, home sand the father tongue, relating to his Persian grandmother, grandfather and aunt being killed under tragic circumstances for their beliefs in 1983. On The Moment Of Change Artspace, Level 1, 300 K’ Road 7 – 28 February Artspace brings international artists Nilbar Güreş (Turkey) and Fancy Violence (Brazil) to Auckland this Pride festival with ‘On the moment of change there is always a new threshold of Imagination’ a research based experimental exhibition, which will show throughout the festival at Artspace gallery in the heart of Karangahape Road. The artists will be in residence at Artspace and new additions to the exhibition will unfold throughout Pride both in the gallery and through offsite events. ‘On the moment of change’ intends to develop, introduce, and integrate a new curatorial perspective into the institutional framework, exhibition programming and organisational structure of Artspace. The project includes the exhibit of art works, staging of performances, and events. The curatorial strategy behind the new conceptual directions for institutional programming departs from the current needs of the institution, and the physical reality of its location. It draws inspiration from literature towards imagining a new linguistic experience, a feeling of an unknown landscape, and breathing in a different climate. The exhibit of art works will focus on critical perspectives about body-transformation/ mind-travel, the archaeology of knowledge and the engineering of life, as well as rituals of transgression and stages of repetition. ‘On the moment of change’ aims to operate as an open studio space for collective learning experiences, selected literature pieces are gradually arriving in the Artspace Reading Room, with a parallel programming of events, reading sessions and discussions. Artist Talk: 24 February at 2pm, 2014. Nilbar Gures in conversation with Adnan Vildiz, free entry. Party: Wind down to smooth sounds and great Art. Sunday 22 February, 11am-4pm, cover charge applies. Festival and Parade Volunteers free entry. Rainbow Youth Pride Art Exhibition Studio One, 1 Ponsonby Road Opens at 5pm, 11th Feb – runs till 26 Feb The annual RainbowYOUTH Pride Art Exhibition will be a showcase of creativity from a range of young, emerging, and established LGBTQ (and allied) artists exploring ideas around sexuality and gender diversity in relation to politics, history, communities and identity. Queering Ecologies Allpress Gallery, cnr Drake and Adelaide Streets, Freemans Bay Wednesday 17 – Friday 23 February An exhibition of local, contemporary queer artists, exploring the relationship between Queer beings/bodies and the natural environment. Curated by Chris Lorimer (curator of last year’s Anatomy Is Not Destiny show) and Jaimee Stockman-Young (of Auckland’s George Fraser gallery) the show takes inspiration from the manifesto of the “Radical Faeries”, a counter culture movement from the late seventies. Featuring sculpture, photography, video and text works, Queering Ecologies questions ideas of hetero normative ecology and the “normal” view of nature, deconstructing the oft prevailing interpretation of LGBTTIF identity as natural/unnatural, connecting the scientific with the spiritual. Queering Ecologies gathers together a group of artists making magic, sharing their visions, re-inventing their myths, and creating dialogue around the politics of queer enspiritment / the enspiritment of queer politics. Artists include Juliet Carpenter, Sam Clyma, Alex Plumb, Zack Steiner-Foxx, Jaimee Stockman-Young and more. For floor talks by the artists and other events during the exhibition period, please keep an eye on the website. A Space for a Story Garnet Station, 85 Garnet Rd, Westmere. Opening night Tues 17th February, 2015. 5-7pm Exhibition open for viewing Wed, Feb 18th - Sat 28th Feb Let your pooch put its best paw forward in this fun afternoon out for all the whānau. ‘A Space for a Story’ exhibition opening will be a free event where the local community as well as the LGBT community will be welcome. While the exhibition is on, PulseArt members will be at Garnet Station to talk with viewers. We are constantly reminded that life is fast, that stories become media sensations. That stories don’t last. They become obsessive, hyped and then disappear. To counteract this we could find space for a story that refuses current cultural media practice, indulging in images that hold narratives, that allow time for contemplation, attentiveness, complexity and multi-layered readings as a way of making space - creating visual texts that might possibly endure. The theme ‘A Space for a Story has challenged the artists to respond in various ways: the experience of travelling as a condition of being ‘in transit’ and our consequent sense of dislocation and anonymity, the space between significant changes in one’s life to moments in metaphorical travels from here to there, an exploration of the in-between, the door between one season and the next or the closet between straight and gay, the lives and stories represented by garage sale bric a brac, old tools, old toys and books, the gateway or threshold to different and exotic worlds, and finally the stories evoked by an unloved Wally dog collection. The Lavender Lips reading group are unable to perform. Instead we plan to hold a discussion afternoon with the 85 Garnet Rd, Westmere artists during the exhibition. A date hasn’t been decided so invitations will be handed out at the opening. Everything And Everyone Art, Craft