The event, supported by Heart of the City, will activate a village of six structures on a closed O’Connell Street from 5pm until 9pm on Thursday 12 October, with some structures to be presented in Freyberg Place until Sunday 15 October with creative and interactive structures for all ages.

Organiser and participant Matt Liggins describes the Urban Art Village as an interactive art installation that attracts public interaction and shares wellbeing within the community of the city.

“I feel that the city is all about people, and making new connections,” says Liggins. “There’s hardly any events like this around, I think they should be every month. A vibrant city is a happy city, a city where people feel a part of something bigger. Big thanks to Heart of the City and the University of Auckland for all of their support and for making this worthwhile.”

This year’s artist line-up includes:

Matt Liggins | City of Dreams
12 October, 5–9pm; 13 October, 9am–9pm; 14 October, 9am–5pm; 15 October, 9am–3pm 

Are you sick of these large, tall, towering, boring grey and glass boxes? Are they lacking something?

If so, come along for a four-day fun building workshop to help create our City of Dreams! We would love to see your ideal utopian city come to life, so come along with your whanau and friends and create what you think the city is missing. We will provide cardboard tubes, hot glue guns, paint and stuff to help decorate your tower. Just turn up with some cool ideas to start making. See you there! 

Jack Wu | Dandelion Minds
12 October, 5–9pm; 13 October, 9am–9pm; 14 October, 9am–5pm; 15 October, 9am–3pm 

Collectively painted flora will gradually grant this mural its garden, advocating for an involved knowledge as it reconnects with the environment it aims to shape, a living archive. Flowers from the soil, the mural’s surface serves as a context for diverse identities and reveals the necessity to acknowledge and learn from each other, enabling us to cultivate resiliently.

Oliver Ray-Chaudhuri and Philip Lee | Making Site
12 October, 5–9pm; 13 October, 9am–9pm; 14 October, 9am–5pm; 15 October, 9am–3pm

Public spaces are made by those who use them, and Late Night Art offers us the opportunity to use Auckland’s streets in extraordinary ways. This installation will invite visitors to imagine possibilities for the city’s shared space through modelmaking, with the surrounding neighbourhood as our collective resource.

The artists on the meaning of the installation: “A miniature allows you to hold bits of the city in your hands. As architecture students, we’re used to working with a scaled model, but this is something non-architects are less accustomed to. We hope the experience of fiddling with the model whilst surrounded by its ‘1:1’ or full-scale equivalent will help bridge the gap between easily-altered representation and the more stubborn reality.”

“The installation is all about the process, not the model, which will remain perpetually unfinished. We would like to imagine that visitors will never see the site in the same way again. That if they return to O’Connell Street or Freyberg Square after the event is over, they’ll think of the 1:20 model they altered and the conversations or arguments they had, and remember all the opportunities lying dormant within these spaces.”

Dian Wang | 70x45
12 October, 5–9pm

The project is an homage and mockery of what an Asian-Kiwi arch might look like. Mostly made from 70x45 timber battens essential to the typical Kiwi home, combined with the aesthetic of the dougong resulting in a kitsch hybridised form. The installation ridicules the scale, tectonic and ornament of the typical Chinatown arch and poses the question: Where exactly is Auckland’s Chinatown? The absence of a recognisable Chinatown in New Zealand has meant that Chinese have quietly assimilated into Kiwi culture behind closed doors, practicing cultural traditions and preserving them over the past 160 years. It welcomes the public to make marks, draw and interact with it.

Victoria Gancheva | Past is Prologue
12 October, 5–9pm

‘Past is Prologue’ reimagines Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a multimedia one-woman performance, exploring the layers of events that make up the play’s fantastical island. The performance will run multiple times throughout the night. Visitors are invited to step into the marquee and be plunged into a world of projection, poetry and fog.

The project is contained within a marquee with walls, and will feature a combination of models, fabric and projections, as well as a fog machine. Visitors will step inside the marquee in groups and watch a short performance involving the aforementioned elements. The performance will run multiple times throughout the night.

“When conceptualising this project, I was excited to have the chance to combine my love for theatre and spatial design, and develop my own interdisciplinary creative practice,” says Gancheva. “Art Week is always such an invigorating time in the city, and I am incredibly grateful for the invaluable opportunity to share my work with a wider audience.”

Auckland Architecture School second-year students | Papakainga Housing
12 October, 5–9pm

Te Pare Auckland Architecture School second-year students have a selection of Papakainga housing for Ngāti Awa on display to share with the public. Come along for a korero with some of the students to see some radical proposals for the future of papakainga housing.

See last year’s installatons here.

Find out more about Auckland Artweek 2023 here.