Gabby O'Connor

some time

Target: $3000 - In association with: Boosted

My name is Gabby O'Connor I am an installation artist living in Wellington NZ.

I am also a mum and I occasionally teach art and craft processes to children and tertiary students. I really like icebergs and the stories and science of exploring Antarctica. My projects all take a lot of time.

My next project is called some time.

For this work I will be making the edge of the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, utilising only tissue paper, staples, light and space.

some time will be exhibited at the Corban Estate Arts Centre in Henderson Auckland opening on May 16, 2013

This work will be made from thousands of sheets of tissue paper hand dyed and cut into geometric shapes. These will then be stapled together and constructed to create a site specific installation that responds to the architecture of the gallery. In essence I will be making certain architectural features disappear and the audience will be faced with a looming, multifaceted paper ice shelf. The work itself will cover an area of approximately 40sq m but when dismantled, will fit into a suitcase.

My work process is very labour intensive, and repetitive and all done by hand.

There is the time it takes to research the ideas and the materials.

The time it takes to lacquer and dye and hand cut the paper.

The time it takes to test and prepare the individual components.

Currently I have the time and means to cover these first few stages.

But then there is the time it takes to assemble and install the final work.

It will take a full 7 days on site to do this.

This is the stage that I need help with to achieve my goals.

I am looking for support with exhibition costs: including getting the work and myself to Auckland for the 7 day installation period before the exhibition and to cover accommodation near the gallery for myself and my baby who will be 1 year old at the time.

My most recent exhibition series was titled what lies beneath. Those works depicted the seldom seen submerged part of an iceberg. Specifically, the icebergs that will eventually calve off the Ross Ice Shelf containing the bodies of Robert Falcon Scott and his crew "sometime" in the future. They were the largest works I'd ever created being 14m long and 4m high in parts. what lies beneath was shown at the City Gallery in Wellington, House of Waiwera, Auckland and the North Wall in Oxford, UK.

This new work continues to reflect on Scott and his crew's story.

To achieve this project, I'm hoping to raise $3000 to cover expenses.

If I exceed my ask. I want to invest in getting my work professionally documented and to upgrade my website. It would also assist with all the expenses that I have incurred thus far.

I'd like to extend my gratitude to The Boosted campaign, which will allow me to expand my audience at the same time as creating a significant companion art work to the What lies beneath iceberg series.

And to the the Arts Foundation for selecting my work to be a part of the inaugural Boosted initiative.. . I'd also like to say...

"Thank you"

Bonfires of 1986

Kate Woods

by Kathryn Tsui

Artist Kate Woods constructs unique photographic arrangements that combine photography, painting and sculpture. Bonfires of 1986 is an exhibition of new works developed in Beijing while she was attending an artist residency programme. For this series, Woods researched the beginnings of China’s contemporary art scene, focusing on the work of politically motivated performance art group, Xiamen Dada, during the mid-1980s.  

Using documentary photographs of performances and exhibitions by the group, Woods reassembles elements of their infamous works in newly composed photographic settings. Key art ‘happenings’ are featured in these new works, such as Xiamen Dada burning their paintings outside the Cultural Palace of Xiamen, and an exhibition in which the group replaced their artworks with building materials from nearby construction sites.

These photographic compositions also include handmade miniatures inspired by Chinese traditional craft forms, along with Woods signature faceted sculptural shapes within images of construction sites and housing development advertisements. The resulting works provide critical reflections on China’s rapid urbanisation. 

Kate Woods photographic constructions are landscapes within a landscape. Her montages explore reality and how photography is used to ‘manufacture’ versions of reality.

Artist Biography

Kate Woods is a Wellington-based artist who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University (2002). In 2012 Woods was the recipient of an Asia New Zealand Foundation Artist in Residency in Bejing, China. Woods has exhibited in artist run spaces, dealer and public galleries including Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Auckland, XYZ Collective, Tokyo and City Gallery Wellington. Her work is featured in the publication, Seen This Century: 100 Contemporary NZ Artists, by Warwick Brown.  Woods work is held in the James Wallace Arts Trust collection and Wellington City Council Art Collection.

LASTJason Hall
1 March - 7 April 2013

By Kathryn Tsui

In LAST, artist Jason Hall carves pickets out of marble to honour his great uncles lost in World War I. The pickets come to signify a monument or headstone for those who lost their lives defending fundamental human principles of home and family. 

Hall recognises that the customary picket fence has come to symbolise domestic land ownership much like the pouwhenua, a land post that for Māori, exists to define and warn of occupied territory. The colonial fence line and pouwhenua both signified land that was either lost or won, similar to the final outcome of war. 

Hall’s pickets are installed in the gallery alongside coffin-like boxes built to protect the marble pickets. Constructed out of skirting boards they further refer to the concept of the home that was being defended. 

Since 1998, Hall’s contemporary jewellery and sculptures have examined the troubled colonial identity of being Pakeha in Aotearoa, New Zealand.  In previous works, Hall fashioned picket brooches out of plywood to represent the home-made plywood shields protesters used in the anti-Springbok tour marches and during the Bastion Point occupation. Hall has also carved bone pickets referring to New Zealand’s dairy farming industry and Māori bone carving traditions. In this exhibition the marble pickets articulate and memorialise the loss of family members through war and the lasting effects colonisation has on the next generations.

Artist Biography

Jason Hall is a West Auckland-based artist with a practice grounded in contemporary jewellery and sculpture. After graduating from Manukau Institute of Technology, MIT, Hall worked with renowned contemporary jewellers and sculptors, Kobi Bosshard, Warwick Freeman and John Edgar. Hall’s work has featured in solo exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia including, Craft ACT in Canberra, Fingers Gallery and Objectspace in Auckland. In 2011 Hall completed a major public art project, Opanuku Bridge which form the entrance ways at both ends of Henderson’s main street.

HAU KIHE POINI - COME TO A POINT
Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi
1 March - 7 April 2013
By Kathryn Tsui

Lalava is the Tongan art of lashing or binding. It is this traditional technique and holistic art form upon which master artist, Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi, bases his cross-disciplinary art practice. In Hau Kihe Poini - Come to a Point, Tohi interprets the lalava pattern into various materials and art mediums.

For Tohi, the lalava pattern is a core system that can be continuously rearranged into geometric abstractions to create optical intrigue. Through line, repetition and perspective shifts that can be reversed and inverted Tohi illustrates the essential relationship lalava has to ways of seeing and living.

Lalava translates as the intersection of space. For more than two decades Tohi has been researching and working with the lalava artform and is a Tufunga Lalava, a chief craftsman of lalava.

Traditionally lalava was both a functional and decorative craft form that was used to lash boats, houses and tools together, and to weave soft furnishings. Lalava designs were significant in many parts of life, including social, philosophical, astrological, navigational and ecological. Tohi says, “Lalava patterns advocated balance in daily living and were metaphorical and physical ties to cultural knowledge.”
 
Contemporising the lalava pattern, Tohi uses modern materials such as steel, wool, Perspex and paint alongside traditional mediums of sennet fibre, wood and stone. Tohi says, “My work transforms the technology of the past into a modern representation of identity and experience. By using the patterns established by lalava, I express a Polynesian heritage with metaphors that speak to the entire community.”

Artist Biography

Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi is a Tongan born artist that has been based in New Zealand since 1978. An internationally renowned artist and sculptor, Tohi has exhibited extensively overseas and completed major public sculptures in Tonga, Fiji, Japan and China. In 2012, Tohi presented a major outdoor sculpture for Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and his lalava craftsmanship is featured in The University of Auckland’s Fale Pasifika. Tohi’s works are held in public collections including Te Papa Museum and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

Find more information about this exhibition on: www.ceac.org.nz