The objects that make up the collections of our art galleries and museums can tell us things about ourselves. They provide us with fragments of information about where we’ve come from, how we live and what we consider to be significant, valuable or sacred. No one story alone is told from the array of objects that amass in these collections over time. Our museums are the safe keepers and custodians of any number of narratives, each providing glimpses into the vast and varied cultures and communities that make up New Zealand life, past and present.

Collected Fictions presents six objects from Te Manawa’s extensive Social History Collection displayed alongside newly commissioned counterparts by six New Zealand artists: Paul Cullen, Julia Morison, Erica van Zon, Suji Park, Glen Hayward and Gareth Williams, each artist making a new work in direct response to a chosen collection artifact.

Much like any member of the viewing public the artists have deciphered the collection objects on their own terms. Responding to what resonates with them most, it might be how it looks or what it’s made of, or the imagined stories of where it’s from or who it was owned and used by.

Housed in a kit-set, custom built structure Collected Fictions shares something in common with a bygone era of travelling museums and menageries where strange and mysterious artifacts from the material and natural world were exhibited side by side. Not arranged by any museological categorisation but rather for their shared power to invoke curiosity or wonder in the mind of the viewer.