Eugene Hansen

Eugene Hansen

Senior lecturer, Whiti o Rehua School of Art; lead coordinator, The Engine Room, Whiti o Rehua School of Art Gallery

Eugene Hansen is an artist, occasional writer and curator who produces collaborative, multimedia art projects often comprised of installation, readymade sculpture, video and sound works. His practice is usually accompanied by live audio-video performances using computers and hand built analogue synthesisers. Hansen’s work proposes that the world we inhabit might best be described as a politicised mediascape where deployed instances of contemporary popular culture reflect the ongoing processes of colonisation. Hansen primarily teaches into the studio papers of the fine arts undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

  • Expertise

    Installation, sculpture, video and sonic arts, live audio video performance, art and electronic technologies, (post) colonial art practice, contemporary Māori art, contemporary collaborative art practice, zombie apocalypse survival video games, bespoke analogue audio circuits.

  • Research Highlights

    New Zealand Film Archive Curator-at-large series (2012) (Co-curator with Jenny Gillam)
    A set of four exhibitions in which Gillam and Hansen commissioned 17 New Zealand and international artists to produce new work. Each exhibition investigated a distinct approach to contemporary video production and the archive (video and the photographic still, contempoary Māori video, video and the remix, the video remade.

    Future Calls the Dawn, 2011, 2012, 2013. Exhibited at Te Tuhi, Auckland, 2011, as part of Soundfull (a survey of Australian and New Zealand sound art); Dunedin Public Art Gallery 2012;International Electronic Arts Symposium, Sydney Australia 2013; and Soundfull (a survey of Australian and New Zealand sound art), City Gallery Wellington.
    A collaborative, multimedia installation and live audio-video performance, the installation consists of a flock of robotic bird alarm clocks deployed over a signwriter’s vinyl wall drawing. This work and the associated performances explore themes of the natural and artificial and the artificial nature of the popular mediascapes we inhabit on a daily basis. (Collaborators Jenny Gillam, Dan Shaw and Dr Kron.)


    An exhibition of eight major new sculptural audio video collaborations installed across the five galleries of Te Tuhi Auckland. This project posits the mediascape we inhabit as continuously recompiled from elements of popular culture. The politics of site, space and territory interrogated using disparately sourced audio and video to simultaneously collapse and articulate space. Rather than isolating a particular concept, each collaborator brings their interest in distinctly different but related aspects of popular and audio culture to the project. The development of this project was enabled through receiving the Massey University Māori Research Award 2010. (Collaborators Jenny Gillam, Dan Shaw, Dr Kron, Peter Trevelyan, Andy Thomson and Mike Heynes.)

  • Qualifications

    BFA (Canterbury University)
    Dip Teach (Christchurch College of Education)
    MFA (RMIT University)

  • Supervision

    Bronwyn Holloway-Smith
    The Southern Cross Cable: A Romance

    2011

    Primary supervisor: Prof. David Cross
    Co-supervisor: Bryce Galloway
    Co-supervisor: Eugene Hansen