Teresa Peters is an artist and filmmaker based in Tamaki Makaurau, currently working in clay and ceramics, photography and moving image. She is interested in bodies, earth bodies, forming and transforming. Chemical compounds and molten entities, in intimate combustion. ‘Excavating’ primordial totems’, as we move on through the Antropocene.. Ceramics is alchemy. Earth, water, air… fire...
DISASTROUSFORMS.COM 2020 ︎ is a body of ceramic and clay artefacts from a faux sci-fi disaster, archived on an online platform - exploring natural disasters, natural history and archiving. Disaster as the mother of revolution . This project was inspired by a field trip to Pompeii with Mark Dion and team, Auckland Museum’s Natural History Collections Online, (where it is archived as a topic) and was made in curatorial conversation with Dina Jezdic. An ode to the ceramics and cosmic post disaster revolutions of Lucio Fontana - navigating our environment as we become ground zero. From volcanoes, corals, and fossils to the quartz in your mobile phone, exploring collections to collective consciousness. As Walter Benjamin observed, collections are never finished.
DISASTROUSFORMS.COM is a nomadic exhibition, navigating the city of Auckland, Auckland Museum and the interwebs, culminating in a special cosmic audio-visual event March 24 2021. Auckland Live Digital Stage Aotea Square.
This project was created in conversation & curatorial collaboration with Dina Jezdic.Her essay A MUSEUM PORTAL FOR A PANDEMIC AESTHETIC and DISASTROUSFORMS.COM are archived as a topic at Auckland Museum Collections Online.
This project was made with the support of Creative New Zealand and Auckland Live.
In 2021 her work ECHOES was awarded the Premier Portage Ceramic Awards Winner. Presented as a large-scale framed photograph documenting folded raw clay fragments like natural history specimens, ECHOES, is the first photographic work to take out the top prize in the award's 21-year history. ECHOES and FOSSIL were finalists in the Portage Ceramics Awards exhibition, Te Uru Waitakare Gallery Dec 2021 - Feb 2022. She is currently a finalist in the Portage Ceramic Awards 2022 - exhibiting from Nov 26 2022 - Feb 2023 at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Art Gallery.
She is currently exhibiting with mothermother at the Aotearoa Art Fair 2022.
In July 2022 she exhibited ORB: PLACING INTO VIBRATION July 13 - Aug 13. 2022 in collab with Torben Tilly and quartz sound healer Cheryl Farthing at the Audio Foundation. The show included QUARTZ SOUND JOURNEY event on Aug 6, with Torben and Cheryl activating Teresa’s installation and participants alike in a transformative crystalline experience.
In October 2021 she exhibited three works,as finialists in the Ceramics NZ 60th National Jubilee Exhibition, Dunedin. She was awarded the Merit award for her work ARTEFACTS.
Teresa showed MOLTENENTITIES.COM - Notes on moving mounatains ︎, new ceramics and archive, as part of From things flow, at RM Gallery in July 2021 with Shelley Simpson, Kate van der Drift and Kathryn Tulloch. Her work focused on Quartz as an activator, it was presented on viewer interactive Ipad, POKE PIECE was activated by the viewer, she collaborated in video work MOLLUSK REFERENCE with Maree Horner and a audio - visual sound journey with sound healer Cheryl Farthing. In July 2022 they launched the companion publication From things flow designed by Kalee Jackson, with essay by Charlotte Huddleston and texts by the artists.
She featured in the Auckland Art Fair 2021, Piki Mai: Up Here section, with Mothermother and RM Gallery. In Nov 2021 she exhibited in TENT, Aotearoa Art Fair. Finger pricks and curses, a textile collab with Mothermother and the West Auckland Resource Centre.
After five years in Berlin and New York, she completed a PGDipFA at Elam in 2015 and was the Ceramics Creative Studio Resident at Studio One Toi Tu 2018/2019. Her interest in earth matters spurs back to her parents, Maree Horner and Roger Peters, both forerunners in the 1970's Groundswell movement - the development of conceptual, post-object and earth art in New Zealand.
ECHO BONE 2019 showed as part of Mothermother alongside Judy Darragh and Natalie Tozer and as part of Clay Dreams - Uku Moemoea, a group show of contemporary ceramics at Nathan Homestead, featuring ceramists from Isobel Thom to the Manurewa Potter’s Club. New Ceramics Acquisitions opened at the Pah Homestead, Wallace Trust in March 2020, alongside Peter Hawkesby.
Previous exhibitions include – Woodenhead, Unnerved: The New Zealand Project, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, 2010. Her video and drawing work featured in Who Is Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, - international mystical group show at Te Tuhi 2007 and later at P.P.O.W Gallery, NYC in 2010.
Teresa is most known for her film work in collaboration with filmmaker Florian Habicht (key collaborator and production designer) ︎ Since WOODENHEAD 2003 , they have been bending the boundaries of independent cinema and documentary in New Zealand. Her film work has screened widely in international film festivals, including Cannes official selection. She is currently developing two feature films with Habicht and is creative consultant on Habicht’s latest documentary. JAMES & ISEY premiered on April 3 2021, the 102nd birthday of it’s star Isey, at the mighty CIVIC. In Nov 2021 WOODENHEAD 2003 was restored in full colour and featured in the New Zealand International Film Festival ︎ in conjunction with Florian Habicht being awarded an Arts Foundation Laureate, the Dame Gaylene Preston Award for Documentary Film.
