The last six months leading up to this residency have been a lot on me, emotionally and mentally. I had taken a break from making any new art as I recovered from burn-out and a broken heart and ongoing feelings of grief/loss (still recovering).
Coming into the studio residency here, I felt like I had been in harvest mode, collecting materials to experiment and play with. As soon as I got to Mparntwe, I got really sick. Twice in a row. Switching into a mode of self-care and isolation (out of concern of infecting others) I began working on these paint imprints on panels of leather quite obsessively.
This (sort of pattern-making/stamping/transfer) technique I created came from a moment when I returned from Aotearoa to my garden in Naarm. I had previously repurposed dried take (the section of the harakeke that is discarded in the process of preparing the whenu for raranga) to make garden stakes. Noticing that the ways that they have dried have formed different shapes on their tips, many of them resemble koru or other symbols in kowhaiwhai. I started using them to curiously and playfully mark make with body paint on my own skin. I then extended this process to involve two other takataapui artists, J Davies and Guy Ritani, mark making on each other's body in a documented private performance ritual.
In my loneliness in isolation, I sought comfort and intimacy in this process, by replacing the live body with leather off-cuts, the most skin-like material I could source. I have felt the act of mark making on this leather can be performed almost anywhere, whether it be a studio at WatchThisSpace, or in the comfort of my own bed, this leather skin wrapped around me like a lover as I press into its softness. I have since sourced more leather panels, generously donated to me by James and Elliot at Elbow Workshop, to continue playing with this process.
I work quite intuitively, so many thoughts and feelings have arisen from this process so far, but here some dot points to try and articulate what I think this new body of work might be doing:
- Attempting to find ways to revive lost and unknown/forgotten/unremembered
knowledge through engaging with cultural materials in lateral ways (and/or attempting
to generate future takataapui folklore)
- Finding ways to meditate on and process ongoing grief, as we are faced with more
and more in the face of climate change and mass extinction
- Creating and playing with textures that I find immense sensation and pleasure in
