To conjure ‘score’ is to conjure the notation of sound. To conjure ‘score’ is also to conjure ‘the measure’ of things: goals achieved, failures experienced. To conjure transformation is to conjure the active playing of the tune suggested by what has been noted, what has been measured. Paper, soil, petals, lists, bandages—what tune do they play and who is playing?

Each artist included in this exhibition employs a process-based practice that draws out the intrinsically contingent nature of the score. Housed within each of the individual works on view in the gallery—textile, film, sculpture, collage—is the relational fullness of lived experience. These relations are tethered together through the range of where the tune is played: between people (the sharing of knowledge through whakapapa); site (a city once lived in); time (inherited histories, the passing of seasons); and even the law (the administrative reality of having a body that requires food, water, healthcare, and shelter).

Spanning multiple generations and contexts, this exhibition explores the ways in which the body is never simply a passive receiver but is essential to the shaping of the lens through which we access the world. Counter to many of the impulses of corrective violence normalised in the 20th century, these bodies play a tune of the ecstatic form. The instruments used are revolt, resistance, collapse, reverence, reform, and regeneration.