Immersed in art of the Anthropocene

This is my last column for Te Hı¯koi Toi. A full cycle of seasons has carried and informed my perceptions and observations of art in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

Exactly a year ago I started with stories of mana whenua in our rohe: the first with Taranaki whā nui, Veranora Hetet and a waiata by Pekaira Rei; the second with the Ngā ti Toa sculpture of Te Rangihaeata, and a writers’ walk with Patricia Grace and Pā taka.

This began as an exploration of what writing about art in our city could look like if it was informed and led by mana whenua, Mā ori concepts and artists.

I have written about many other artists over this year too, always with a keenness to understand the messaging and intention of their amazing work. It is to all the artists that give us so much to think about, experience and enjoy that I want to mihi to, and huge gratitude to mana whenua for the use of their land to house art galleries and public art around our city.

The waiata I wrote about a year ago, Ngā Puke Kō rero, speaks about the stories held in the paemaunga, the hills around our harbour, and how each waterway weaves its stories to the city. As I walked into Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University this week, Rangi Kipa’s Pikimairawea, or Maui’s fish hook, coming out of the earth is a nice reminder of the story of our whenua coming into existence.

The Adam Art Gallery furthers this inquiry with Listening Stones Jumping Rocks, a show curated by Susan Ballard and Sophie Thorn, for whom the artists ‘‘remind us of our relationship with both materials and whenua’’. There is a sense in this curation that we are being asked to listen and feel as much as look.

Rock, water and ice all feature in this impressive response to the environment in this changing time of our existence.

Len Lye’s Universe booms sound throughout the gallery and is cyclical, almost questioning the space it holds in its centre. Ngahuia Harrison’s Pakora (to be low (of tide) is a photo of a young woman on a rocky bank looking like she is asking us all what we are doing to fix this mess.

Shona Rapira-Davies’ A Lament shows floral plants connecting via root systems in the earth-pigmented background.

Janine Randerson and Tru Paraha’s Waiho, retreat is a visual and aural immersion into a glacier, with Paraha walking backwards on the ice as a representation of this time on Earth. Sorawit Songsataya’s huge resin moa bird lying in the foyer almost looks like an ice sculpture and is surrounded by stone and resin introduced birds peering around the stairwell watchful, remembering.

I recommend lying down inside the sound experience Te Oro o te Ao by Rachel Shearer. Cassandra Barnett has written extensively on Shearer’s installation in the art journal Ate and I felt grateful to finally

get to be with the immersive sounds of water on rock and sand and feel I was somehow merging with it and expanding in the darkness with the sound.

Phil Dadson’s Echo-Logo sends yelps jumping up the stairwell, and the videography of Antarctica is a recurring reminder of humans’ impact on the environment. Below this it really feels like we are stepping into the Earth, with Anne Noble’s whiteout Antarctic photographs and Raewyn Martyn’s bio-polymer and stone paintings that feel like algae or lichen is growing over the inside of the gallery.

If you get in quick, you can catch the end of Tyne Gordon and Jonathan Kay at Jhana Millers Gallery. Kay’s glacial images have an end-of-the-Earth feeling to them, and Gordon is immersing us in their inquiry of the body and the land. Clay and tree branches are mixed with paint and metal. The Earth is lifting in here.

At Page Galleries upstairs are Sarah Munro’s ongoing embroidery work drawing on the 1769 drawing by the navigator Tupaia, of Joseph Banks trading with Mā ori. Munro’s series Continuing Trade interrogates historic exchanges and environmental impacts, and the images of

kaimoana being traded for plastic and electronic waste are gut-punch reminders that not only was the whenua taken but the way forward in caring for our taiao is to listen to our indigenous voices. As a Pā kehā artist it is interesting that Munro is continuing to use this imagery, but in so many ways the issues brought up by this exchange have still not been resolved.

Moving forward while looking backwards, who are we listening to? Is it the stories told in water, in stone, in film and in paint? Are we listening carefully enough to the voices of our ancestors, of our Mā ori artists?

I leave you with gratitude for your company in this past year, traversing the paemaunga of our city, immersing ourselves in the art that speaks to our current existence.