COMMODE

Recovery Room Open Call COMMODE invites artists, writers and curators to respond to the question of sickness or disability as a way of working in the arts. This proposition begins from a simple condition, that the body sets limits. Time can quickly become uneven. Our capacity fluctuates. Work, no matter how planned, can become interrupted or delayed. It may be returned to, it may not. Under these conditions, the structures that organise the arts such as deadlines, openings, or production come into tension with lived experience. Rather than treating this as an obstacle to overcome, this call asks what happens when those conditions are taken as a methodology. What forms of art and exhibition making emerge when time isn’t linear? How do curatorial decisions and artistic processes shift when attention is fatigued? What does it mean to curate or produce work that does not aspire to productivity? Sickness and disability reconfigure our relations to labour and care. They introduce forms of knowledge that are often excluded from institutional rhythms. Rest, waiting, repetition and maintenance become daily, structuring conditions. Working can become shorter, slower and fragmented. It may unfold over time rather than arrive fully formed. It may not be coherent, or resolved. We are not asking for disclosures of sickness and disability, or narratives of recovery. Instead, we ask contributors to consider how their methods shift under conditions of constraint, how artistic production adapts to the body, and how practice might reorganise. Contributions may take any form: fragment notes correspondence text that remains unfinished Length and structure are open. Timeframes are flexible. Writers are invited to work at their own pace, within their own conditions. Please email your texts to [email protected] COMMODE will publish these texts as they arrive. The project will remain open, accumulating over time. The aim is to hold a space where writing, and in turn artistic production, can operate differently.

"Perhaps ritual can exist as a political form – what are we if not a zen garden of maggots, these towering figures dragging their rake (or is it a crucifix? or the frame of a meat hook?) through, scraping furrows and skewering milky larvae.” 41 Bodies by Ruben Thomson is a reflection on HELL, a performance by Ys Blue, Veale Moss and Odeious that took place at COMMODE 9pm, 21 March 2026. Available to read on our website now. @irissilver_mist @flesh_spirit @katlang___ @fucksunjack

Documentation of HELL by Ys Blue is available to view on our website. @flesh_spirit

Wānanga: Manifesto in the Bamboo Forest concludes, for now! The next chapter of Jieying Cai + collaborators ongoing project will manifest at COMMODE opening 1 August. @bittermelonpomelo @teaoemily @te__ara @morais.ethan @mouldyjuice @mathildepolmarddesign @zedzishun

Wānanga: Manifesto in the Bamboo Forest 竹林里的誓言 Jieying Cai 蔡杰盈, Emily Lyall, Te Ara Minhinnick, Ethan Morais, Mathilde Polmard, Sage Rossie-Tong, Zed Xu 榛子瞬 7 – 9 April 2026 Offsite: Opononi, Hokianga Manifesto in the Bamboo Forest 竹林里的誓言 is a skill sharing wānanga organised by Jieying Cai 蔡杰盈. The gathering brings together seven artists in Hokianga, focusing on the materiality of bamboo as a vessel for discourse around migration and transnational belonging. Where belonging is collectively shaped through care and coming together otherwise. This wānanga extends from Jieying Cai 蔡杰盈 exhibition with COMMODE opening on 1 August this year. Supported by COMMODE, and the Asian Artist Fund administered by Satellites @aksatellites Jieying Cai 蔡杰盈 is a first-generation Chinese New Zealander with ancestors from Ganzhou 贛州. She is a multimedia artist and curator, currently exploring themes of belonging and identity in natural fibre and installation. @bittermelonpomelo @teaoemily @te__ara @morais.ethan @mathildepolmarddesign @mouldyjuice @zedzishun

Video documentation of the opening performance of HELL is now available to view on our website. Viewtime 1:17:21 @flesh_spirit @katlang___ @fucksunjack @ritualheaps

See you tomorrow 😈 You can still DM or email us to come to Hell.

HELL Ys Blue Opening performance with Veale Moss and Odeious Saturday 21 March, 9pm R18 Registration essential: [email protected] Ys Blue opens HELL in collaboration with Odeious and Veale Moss on Saturday 21 March at 9pm, with a performance that acts as the project’s initiating gesture. Drawing on necropolitical frameworks, HELL considers the power dynamics that determine which bodies are protected and which are exposed to death and suffering. The performance situates the body within a longer lineage of post-nuclear and Cold War imaginaries, where faith, apocalypse and military futurism collapse into one another. HELL reflects on how contemporary regimes of security mobilise religious narratives alongside technological violence, particularly within militarised contexts where apocalyptic belief systems are entangled with geopolitical strategies. Here, the body is caught within the weaponisation of ideology itself. The performance establishes the conceptual ground from which Blue’s exhibition HELL emerges, foregrounding the body as a battleground within systems of belief, surveillance and control. Supported by Ritual Heaps. @flesh_spirit @fucksunjack @katlang___ @ritualheaps

Catgirl Exhaust Fan Cassie Gilmore-Freeth Presented by COMMODE and MESH for Newtown Festival. @roach_corpse @dirt_x_mesh @newtownfestnz

Catgirl Exhaust Fan by Cassie Gilmore-Freeth is a one day only installation, today, 10am–8pm. Presented with MESH at the MESH Alley Stage as a part of Newtown Festival. Cassie will perform at 5.05–5.20PM 📍Donald McLean Street, Newtown. @roach_corpse @dirt_x_mesh @newtownfestnz n

COMMODE is excited to announce George Turner as our 2026 artist in residence. This marks the beginning of COMMODE’s first residency programme, offering a dedicated studio space for ten months at Anvil House in central Wellington. Conceived as an extension of COMMODE’s commitment to experimental practice, the residency provides sustained space, and critical dialogue within our framework. Over the course of the year, Turner will develop a body of work in situ, culminating in the realisation of a project presented at COMMODE. The residency reflects our investment in long-form artistic research and in building infrastructures that privilege depth. George Turner (they/them) is a Wellington based transdisciplinary artist working across installation, sculpture, moving image, and digital processes. Their practice is grounded in queer and Pākehā identity and shaped by post-human and post-colonial frameworks, using art as a site to examine how ecology, memory, and power are entangled in Aotearoa. Their work has been exhibited widely across Aotearoa and internationally. George was the inaugural recipient of the Trans-Tasman Digital Artist Fellowship, and has undertaken residencies, most recently at PADA Studios, Portugal. Recent exhibitions include Stages of Grief, PADA Studios, Lisbon, 2025; Under the Pasture, Enjoy Contemporary Gallery, Wellington, 2025; Tangible Remains, Astor Bristed, Queenstown, 2024; and Second Impressions, Bowen Galleries, Wellington, 2023. They have assisted artist Lisa Reihana on projects including Groundloop, 2022; Ihi, 2020; and The Battle, 2022. In 2026, George will present two solo exhibitions in Aotearoa and participate in a group exhibition in Berlin. @georgeturner___

Catgirl Exhaust Fan Cassie Gilmore-Freeth A one day only installation. Sunday 8 March, 10am–8pm. Presented with MESH at the MESH Alley Stage as a part of Newtown Festival. Performance: 5.05–5.20PM Cassie Gilmore-Freeth is a sculptor and performance artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara whose practice is driven by decay, lesbian sadomasochism, and symbiotic power relations. Through her work she aims to complicate the agency of the human and non-human and forge a perverted functionality that embraces failure, destruction, and ephemerality. She has collaborated with experimental noise improv duo Frogmeat and has performed/shown work at The Dowse, Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, Meanwhile, and Play_Station Artist Run Space. @roach_corpse @dirt_x_mesh @newtownfestnz