Review: Te Wiki Āhua o Aotearoa 'In Over Our Heads' 25th March 2025 [Web Exclusive]

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Written by Rosanna (she/her) | @strangeandmisguided | Contributing Writer

In Over Our Heads - 25th March 2025

Surrounded by chatter as the music crescendoed and screams emanated, I couldn’t tell if it was the track or the audience. A reel plays, showing us a street view. I was half convinced it was a shot of us waiting outside. A dancer brandishing long scissors flirts with cutting skin.

The smog in the air is one part lychee vape, the other being the sickly-sweet fog machine pumping in the corner.  It’s dark here; the club beats making my teeth chatter. A black door partitions the models and the audience - a portal of some sort. Strikingly simple in the highly curated beats and blue-soaked room. Surrounded by chatter as the music crescendoed and screams emanated, I couldn’t tell if it was the track or the audience. A reel plays, showing us a street view. I was half convinced it was a shot of us waiting outside. A dancer brandishing long scissors flirts with cutting skin. Reminiscent of Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964), she undulates as her shears cut her garment - it feels violent. Like she’s possessed to do so. The collection, in its essence, feels violent, with models wearing armour- apocalyptic chic. They’re all veiled, whether literally dripping in chains or more simply in smoky Mad Max-esque shadow; they seem otherworldly. Mutants from the future, clothing as armour in layers of cotton and clinking chain. One could imagine the world this collection comes from: post-nuclear war, the survivor rising from the acidic ashes. Hair dances and models taunt the crowd, each garment a new character. A wasteland princess with chains for eyebrows, a godly figure in a shroud of button-ups, glaring eyes scouring the crowd. The tallest model was holding a Perspex window over their chest, screen-printed with a shirt. Bulletproof glass or the emperor’s new clothes? The models shone in their performance, with pointed glares as the door was theatrically opened and closed at whim. We were being played with, we are the society In Over Our Heads wanted to critique - playing the role of economic gatekeeper, the cold witness to art's uncertain future. The collection was a success for the first-time solo exhibitor, Fringes, with co-collaborator jeweller Anthurium. A collection intended to ‘balance ambitions with practicality’, a criticism of the corporate machine. This, instead, made me imagine an apocalyptic wasteland, the one our world seems to be heading towards. 

Hair dances and models taunt the crowd, each garment a new character. A wasteland princess with chains for eyebrows, a godly figure in a shroud of button-ups, glaring eyes scouring the crowd.