Rūma pauni totoro ꩜ A Reaching Reading Room
2026 25th June–12th July
Outhouse Gallery, Brunswick Park, London SE5 7RH
Rūma panui totoro is a reading room of Māori feminist and takatāpui publishing which takes the form of a koro: the bud of a fern unravelling.
For this first edition, Rūma panui totoro unfurls around two key periodicals on loan from the nearby Feminist Library (Peckham): Bitches, Witches & Dykes: a women’s liberation newspaper (1980–82) and Broadsheet: New Zealand’s Feminist Magazine (1971-1998). Building outward contextually, thematically and graphically, Rūma panui totoro uncovers roaming readings of this period of Māori feminist lesbian organising as it vibrates across time and space.
Alongside the reading room, the show catalogue includes texts by Hana Pera Aoake, and Sorcha Thompson, Rami Rmeileh and Akram Salhab exploring the role print publishing plays in indigenous sovereignty and solidarity movements from Aotearoa to Palestine.
︎ Photography by Emma Bentley Fox