Spoilt Objects is a meditative site of encounter containing forms that slip between object and entity. Appearing as alchemical and biological impressions of dreams and machina, the series navigates a sensuous tension between boundaries of care and control, love and obsolescence, possession and transcendence. In her first solo exhibition in Tāmaki Makaurau, the Chinese-New Zealand artist repurposes found screens into sites of tender resistance against the churn of consumerism.

The exhibition’s title, Spoilt Objects, plays on both ruin and indulgence. An ode to the obsolete, a critique of disposability, and an exploration of mediated companionship— each work in Spoiled Objects acts as a shrine, robed in furs and satins that complicate their technological origins. Never fully functional nor entirely decorative, the moving image draws attention back to the apparatus itself.

Each work emanating a looping, almost orchestral soundscape creates an environment that feels simultaneously chaotic and intimate, like the murmurs of sweet nothings or the trill of a call waiting.

There's a tension in how these objects persist in their own peculiar rhythms. The circuitry seems to breathe beneath their soft, tactile casings, the moving image taking on a life of its own. Evoking the ups and downs of companionship, from infatuation, the adjustment period, and an outgrowing— Pan explores the alchemy of spending time with another.

Pan's animistic interventions disrupt the expected relationship between viewer and screen through exploring the objecthood of her video practice. These were once devices designed for looking, now transformed into objects that look back. The devices we once worshipped now taunt us with their obsolescence in a cruel optimism, with Pan refusing to let them expire quietly.

- Steffanie Relucio

Steffanie Relucio is the Director of Plomacy, a newly established gallery and bookshop in Tāmaki Makaurau that focuses on digital and moving image practice.