Ka haere au ki te tŌWenetanga o te rĀ
2019 - Present
(developing project)
“Storytelling has always been one of the key ways knowledge was sustained and protected within indigenous communities. Reclaiming story-telling and retelling our traditional stories is to engage in one form of decolonisation.”- Jenny Lee-Morgan, from “Decolonising Māori Narratives: Pūrākau as Method,” in Kaupapa Rangahau: A Reader
Stories act as functions of weaving and are intrinsically connected to acts of making. My current practice is positioned in the spaces that exist within interweaving language and craft, gathering acts of storytelling from ancestral homelands into tactile, experiential encounters. In drawing from the pūrākau (traditional story) of ancestor mountain Taranaki,
Ka haere au ki te tōwenetanga o te rā considers connection to place and migration across the hum and swell of the sea, across distance and dislocation, towards the setting place of the sun.
Hand and machine knit New Zealand wool; hand-embroidered cotton text; found-fibre silk chiffon patchwork, iPhone recording, HD video projection, 35mm film, audio recorded poetry, small moments of undocumented ceremony
Connected works include:
distance measured by a mountain’s grief (2019), Hand- embroidered cotton on digitally printed hemp, 700 x 1280mm
Te Pūrākau o Taranaki, a filmpoem (2019) HD film, narrated poetic text (duration 3 minutes)
Te Pūrākau o Taranaki, a re-remembering (2019) Machine-knit merino wool, hand embroidered cotton, poetic text.
Two pieces, each 500 x 700mm
kahu-kupu: Taranaki (2019). Hand-knit wool, 1400 x 800mm; durational being-in-place
Ka haere au ki te tōwenetanga o te rā, (2019) digital video projection (duration 55 second loop)
ko au te awa ko to awa ko au (2019), found-fibre silk chiffon patchwork
ki uta, te awa, ki tai (2019) three hand-knit/embroidered badges
Undocumented small moments of ceremony, hīkoi, being-in- place
First iteration shown in Te haerenga tuatahi ki Tongaporutu, St Paul St Gallery Three, 2019
Second iteration shown in Hear Me Roar!, Weasel Gallery, 2019
Third iteration shown in Fine Thread, Thick Colour, Allpress Gallery, 2019
