I'Æ, Atholhu
a series of works in collaboration with Thomas I’Anson
2014
The first point of departure to create this exhibition was the use of Polynesian navigation guides known as stick charts. These objects made from curved and straight branches representing the winds, wave patterns and ocean swells between two or more islands reflect in both their practices the relationship between object and mental image. Studied and internalised these charts never left land, serving as a guide, not as a map, an object to crystallise schemata in the mind’s eye.
Atholhu, the exhibition’s title comes from the etymological root for the word atoll; the coral structures formed around an extinct volcanic island that grow upward over thousands of years at the same rate its island base falls beneath the sea. The process of autopoiesis causing these ring-like islands to develop reflects the concerns and processes of both of the artists – a mode of growth which occurs in response to shifting frameworks.
It is both artists conviction that the art work comes into being via a framework that guides but never maps responses to stimuli.