Thoughts from an Unsettled Settler, Toi Poneke Gallery

2010
Toi Poneke Gallery
Wellington

You can click here to see the catalogue and essay I wrote contextualising this exhibition.

I didn’t get any video documentation of this work unfortunately. In practical terms however, the installation was in an L shaped gallery, visitors were asked to enter barefoot, walking down two rolls of turf (disconnected land / lawn) leading to the first end wall, where a fabricated dictionary definition of Pākeha (colonial descendent in Aotearoa) was printed in vinyl onto the wall. It was printed in a colour matched exactly to Winsor and Newton’s pink-ish oil paint called ‘Flesh Tint’.

After reaching this wall, the visitor turns, guided into the next section of the gallery, continuing to walk barefoot on the carpet of turf (thin colonial connection to whenua) toward the final end wall. This last avenue of the gallery has large pieces of paper hanging either side, bearing charcoal drawings of disembodied heads. Walking through these hanging drawings creates sense of being flanked by faces (collective Pākeha ghosts - more on this in the essay). On the final end wall, a is a large video projection, of the ocean lapping the edge of the shore, but the footage plays in reverse, so waves lap away from the shore, working hard against ‘arriving’. The sound sucks backward too. The image of the ocean reversing arrival feels somehow sickening. The footage is slowed down and like the drawings, it’s in black and white. This projection creates the only light in the room. Visitors standing in front of this moving image, become silhouetted against it, becoming part of the image.

Viewing the catalogue is probably the best way to get a sense of the work and concepts. Documenting this project here, and tracking down the catalogue essay and images and re-reading them, there are aspects which are dated and at this point in time seem a little cringey in places - but the work worked in the space and time it was made for.