Exhibition explores complexities of housing

An exhibition on housing estates and their impact opens at AUT University’s St Paul St Gallery next week.

Art director and curator of St Paul St Gallery, Charlotte Huddleston, said the exhibition “deals with housing complexes and the social and political situation around housing”.

Housing complexes from Indonesia, the Netherlands, and New Zealand will be portrayed through still and moving images.

A photographer and video maker, Dieneke Jansen said her exhibition came from her interest in “how our world has spatially organised systems”.

Her exhibition also touches on Auckland’s housing crisis debate.

With a shortage of homes and land available in Auckland, many people have become homeless.

This issue can be seen in Ms Jansen’s exhibition, as it is “definitely part of the dialogue across those three works as well”.

Ms Jansen said being born in the Netherlands and moving to New Zealand has given her awareness.

The photographer said living in New Zealand offered “the whole sense of colonial histories that I don’t think I would have had if my family had stayed in the Netherlands”.

“Looking at the way I continue with that privilege, which I have inherited from my colonial history and what I do with that became increasingly important to me.”

Ms Jansen hopes people will “listen to some of the narratives and perhaps think differently about the situation we’re in, in Auckland”.

“For me, it’s been really important to listen to what [people in these housing complexes] have to say and what their experiences are, and to create a space for that; to create space for narratives that aren’t often heard.”

It’s an opportunity for people to have a voice, said Ms Jansen.

“I’m hoping that people who come to the gallery might take some time to listen rather than have a politician’s account of a situation.”

Dwelling on the Stoep will take place from June 9 to July 15.