A close reading of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
About this Event
Join us for a conversation examining Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore’s portraiture with curators Cameron Ah-Loo Matamua, Kirsty Baker and Lisa Beauchamp. This talk seeks to contextualise the artists to both new and familiar audiences, tracing the production of their Surrealist portraits through to the rediscovery of their work in the 1990s. As artworks never exhibited during the artists’ lifetime, this dialogue will examine interpretations of Cahun and Moore’s images and why we are still debating them today.
The Studies for a Keepsake public programme is brought to you by The Gerrard and Marti Friedlander Charitable Trust.
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Cameron Ah Loo-Matamua (Samoan, Chinese, Pākeha) is Curator Special Projects at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. From 2019–22 they were Curator of Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery at AUT (formerly St Paul St Gallery) and have previously been a Professional Teaching Fellow at Te Waka Tuhura Elam School of Fine Arts. Cameron has also worked as an editor for Art News Aotearoa and their writing has been published in a number of New Zealand and international publications.
Dr Kirsty Baker is a writer, art historian and curator of contemporary art. She is based in Te Whanganui a Tara where she works as a curator at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi. Recent curatorial projects include Site Seeing (2025), Julia Morrison: Ode to Hilma (2024), Memory Lines (2024), Ngahuia Harrison: Coastal Cannibals (2023) and Ana Iti: I must shroud myself in a stinging nettle (2022), for which the artist was nominated for the 2024 Walter's Prize. Originally from Scotland, Baker has been researching and writing about art in Aotearoa for over a decade, and completed her PhD in Art History at Victoria University of Wellington in 2019. Her writing on contemporary art has been published widely in New Zealand, and international publications. Her book Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa was published in 2024 and received the Mātātuhi Foundation First Book Awards Judith Binney Prize for Illustrated Non-Fiction at the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Lisa Beauchamp joined Gus Fisher Gallery in 2018 and has been responsible for developing the gallery’s identity and programme of exhibitions and events as a leading centre for contemporary art in Tāmaki Makaurau. Since the reopening of the gallery in 2019 following upgrades to its heritage interior, Lisa has brought works by internationally renowned artists to Aotearoa New Zealand for the first time, and supported major commissions by Aotearoa artists. Guided by intersectional feminist frameworks, Lisa takes a fluid approach to curating with a strong commitment to the idea that galleries can be enjoyable, reflective and self-directed areas of experience. In 2024, she co-curated the landmark exhibition Derek Jarman: Delphinium Days, in partnership with City Gallery Wellington. The show subsequently toured to UNSW Galleries, Sydney.
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