Embodied material transformations (2)
1 December 2022 at 2:30:00 am
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Session Convenors
Professor Heather Galbraith, Massey University
Session Speakers
Judith Reardon, Curtin University
Hana Pera Aoake
Gabby O’Connor, University of Auckland
This dual-session panel explores how contemporary acts of making and material transformations in Aotearoa and Australia can embody kinship, and/or critical enquiry in craft/object-based practices. Inviting makers, curators and writers to reflect on current practices situated across jewellery, textiles, object making where hand-crafting is a means of embodied exploration and knowledge sharing. Processes involving conscious cultivation or collection of materials are especially welcomed. The session begins with a group discussion on project-in-progress Deep Material Energy, including contributions from the eight makers (four from Aotearoa and four from Naarm), and curator and panel facilitator Heather Galbraith, plus five presentations selected from paper submissions.
A mycelial model of collaboration through fungi’s mythical and fantastic weirdness
Judith Reardon
The idea that objects are mutually autonomous informs this presentation as it meanders through the exotic world of fungi’s mythical and fantastic weirdness. It is an exploration of how artists and objects might collaborate to create works that encourage a caring and creative relationship between humans and the Earth. After the devastation of the 2019/20 Black Summer Bushfires the artist/presenter interrogated the transformative impact of the fires through a process of observation, recording and interaction. The surprising and magical abundance of fungi led to a collaboration between artist and fungi. Object making became a mycelial model of collaboration in which materials were shaped and transformed in unexpected and exciting ways. This mycelial model offers a vehicle for overcoming people’s collective climate change distress and establishing a more caring and sustainable connection with the Earth.
I lead with my wairua: making kin through whakapapa
Hana Pera Aoake
For Maaori, whakapapa is the web that binds us into ways of making kin with everything around us. It provides a way to reframe the world in terms that are beneficial to both human and non-human lifeforms. For Maaori artists like Neke Moa, Ron Te Kawa and Arielle Walker making
objects and textiles is a process that invites them to exchange hau with tuupuna, to stand alongside them, and to create an embodied space where they can connect to the whenua of this place - Aotearoa. Indigenous bodies, objects or things are not understood as discrete or independent (where one object or quality can be recognised as singular), because of the relation in Te Ao Maaori that everything has a mauri. Whether this be utilising and bending the rules of quilt making to create visions of wahine atua, sewing together fibres dyed with healing plants collected from places where ancestors are from or finding natural materials sourced from the shoreline, these artists make work that slowly heals the ruptures caused by colonisation and offers new non-capitalist way of relating to the planet. This paper will pull apart these ideas thinking through ways we make kin through whakapapa.
Moving around makes art
Gabby O’Connor, University of Auckland
We move our bodies and our hands to manipulate the materials, to see what is possible with something that is both familiar and made strange. While moving, we embody knowledge and experiences, making new information sticky, while making art and contributing to something that is bigger than ourselves. We move our bodies to shift viewpoints, to see our collective efforts from another position. To engage with empathy and possibility that is both near and far.
“MOVING AROUND MAKES ART” is a quote by an anonymous workshop participant from my PhD research project, The Unseen, which looks at different ways of making sense of climate change through collaborative art making and story-telling using rope as a sculptural drawing material. The workshops carefully fold audiences in to the process of making, and pleasurable experience of moving materials. Once installed, gallery rules are broken where audiences are then invited to touch and walk on the artwork. In this presentation, I will discuss the multiple ways this research is embodied and the 8000 bodies that have contributed to this project so far.
Biographies
Professor Heather Galbraith, Massey University
Heather Galbraith is a curator, writer and educator. Born in Auckland she has lived in London, UK and Auckland and Wellington in Aotearoa. She is Professor of Fine Arts and Director Postgraduate within Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Wellington. Galbraith has held roles including Senior Curator Art at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Senior Curator City Gallery Wellington, and inaugural Director/Curator of ST PAUL St. Gallery, AUT University, Auckland. She spent 12 years in London, UK where she undertook postgraduate studies in curatorial practice at Goldsmiths College, and worked as Exhibitions Organiser at Camden Arts Centre, London.
Judith Reardon, Curtin University
Judith Reardon is an emerging artist and researcher who uses a practice led methodology. Through a process of embodied exploration Judith explores the materiality and consciousness of objects within the natural environment. Judith has exhibited at Shoalhaven City Gallery, Goulburn Regional Gallery, the Contemporary Art Society of Victoria and Artscape 481. Her work has been accepted by the prestigious Kangaroo Valley Arts Prize, she is a member of a local artist collective, and is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) through Curtin University, WA.
Hana Pera Aoake
Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Hinerangi, Ngāti Mahuta,Tainui/Waikato) is an artist and writer. Hana has published widely and sometimes organises exhibitions, readings, and conversations. Hana holds an MFA from Massey University and was part of the 2020 ISP programme at Maumaus des escola artes. Currently they co-organise Kei te pai press, an Indigenous-led publishing and education project. Hana published their first book, A bathful of kawakawa and hot water with Compound Press in 2020. They have had work in publications such as Granta, the Sunday Star Times and recently in The Material Kinship Reader.
Gabby O’Connor, University of Auckland
Gabby O’Connor has a material, spatial and sculptural practice. She likes to make things out of stuff in interesting spaces and places. More recently she has been collaborating with scientists and communities with a touring social art/social science project around climate change, The Unseen with 8000 participants across 6 sites with 12km of rope. O’Connor is also a member of the feminist dj collective, The SheJays who share a love of music and making opportunities to dance and be together.