Exhibited Works
Archived Event
Feather Messages: the ones we take for granted holds space for intimate conversation between birds and humans and trees. This performance/video project continues the ongoing collaborative inquiry of Forest Vicky Kapo (Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Raukawa) residing on Dja Dja Wurrung land Central Victoria, and val smith (Pākehā) at the edges of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland on Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara whenua. They have been exploring together what it means to be transgender and migrating between lands, places and cultural spaces since 2020. Engaging a collaboration of Māori/Pākehā, Indigenous/settler-coloniser, and human/nonhuman their work is energised critically and creatively by the waters and winds that connect Aotearoa and so called Australia.
The installation is a sculptural taonga, a blue plastic barrel that enables several people to direct their focus along radiating tendrils to the central moana-filled vessel. Intricately woven kawe (strapping) made from tī kōuka (cabbage tree leaves) holds seven kōhatu (rocks) bound to the end of each taura (rope), including pounamu (jade and serpentine), ōnewa (graywacke), kōkawa (andesite), tokauku (shale), and takawai (quartz) sourced from Kā Tiritiri o te Moana (the Southern Alps) and from Taranaki. Tī kōuka fibre is customarily used for fishing lines and waka bindings because it lasts a long time before breaking down in sea water. Louie has used it to bind carved pungapunga (pumice stones) which float inside the plastic barrel, their form mimicking the kāeo sea tulip.
The barrel and its technical jewellery were made by Adam Ben-Dror (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Tangata Tiriti), who is an artist who looks to the masses of human-generated scraps of overconsumption with opportunistic eyes and reconfigures e-waste and plastic into new forms, imagining new ways of co-existing with the more than human world in troubled times. Part of the sculpture, a carved pounamu mauri stone named Tuāhine Pouhanga (sisters of creation) was contributed by Neke Moa (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Ahuriri, Kāi Tahu, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tūwharetoa), an adornment and object artist who reveals whakapapa and connection by bringing together pattern and forms from the atua and their stories. Ngā mihi ki a Dr Tāwhanga Nopera, Paula Conroy, Yuval Zalk-Neale, Ann Shelton, Aroha Jensen, Whiro Walker, and Gus Fisher Gallery for tautoko in creating this work.
A installation of bespoke gallery ‘noise’ considering the socio-legal nature of sound as part of, or incidental to, a performance.
The capturing of audio/sound as a component of performance recorded to video in public spaces can to some degree be at the discretion of the performer. Volume levels and the continuity and duration can be planned in a quiet moment at the outset, but final performances are often subject to the conditions of the site, on the day. The quality of the recording devices, the temperature, the number of people inhabiting the space at any given time, and the structural surrounds that come with features to subdue and reflect, provide unexpected moments during a performance to capture sound just being sound.
A dense kinetic installation built from local rubbish, brought to life by strings and collaborative interventions with the audience and Cascadian puppeteer enormousface, the work questions the isolate permeability of the [human] body, its contexts and its waste.
A ko-labor-ative installation of trashed utility coming to life to scream against the human body — [The tacit centering of homo-sapiens “people” as the de facto bearers of signification has disenchanted the world and created a horded underclass of Abjects afloat in a sea of their own disembodied, unpersoned uselessness…..can leap to lend these specters valent corporeality in the floating pathos of their absence?]
Photography by Robyn Jordaan
Pawa runs on the contributions of our event goers and public funding.
We believe performance art should be assible to everyone, thats why majority of our shows are open to the public, however if you have funds to spare please consider contributing.
