Janet Lilo documents the contemporary moment, using experimental processes to turn the familiar into the extraordinary. The sites and sounds, places and publics that infiltrate our everyday actions become her raw material. Similarly, her interactions with people become the basis for community collaborations. This focus on real people and real experiences embodies an important social consciousness, bringing into the gallery people, images and technologies that are often overlooked because of their ubiquity. It is within mainstream behaviours and widely used technologies, however, that Lilo most keenly observes power dynamics between access, agency and representation.
The exhibition Janet Lilo: Status Update is Lilo’s first solo survey exhibition. A phrase cribbed from Facebook, ‘Status Update’ refers to her well-known interest in social media as material, a self-aware use of a survey exhibition as validation — and indeed elevation — of an artist’s practice, as well as a description of how Lilo has treated the works in the exhibition.
Janet Lilo: Status Update is not a traditional survey. Rather than simply re-showing past works, Lilo has borrowed concepts, processes and technologies from previous works to create three new, large-scale installations that reflect back on and refine the inquiries underpinning her practice.
The survey exhibition Janet Lilo: Status Update is accompanied by a publication of the same name. It features text from five writers: Ioana Gordon-Smith, Monique Redmond, Caterina Riva, Ema Tavola and Nina Tonga. With Tessa King acting as editor and Te Uru’s in-house designer Julia Gamble over-seeing Status Update’s look and production, the book is proudly an all-woman affair.
Curated by Ioana Gordon-Smith.
Generously supported by Creative New Zealand, Tautai Pacific Arts Trust, and Rose and John Dunn.
Presented in association with Auckland Festival of Photography.