whiriwhiri-ā-rōpū

Tanya Ruka

By Kathryn Tsui

whiriwhiri-ā-rōpū is a selection of current and previous moving image works by visual artist Tanya Ruka that weave together in a continual visual conversation. Māori weaving and carving patterns are the fundamental structures within Ruka’s moving images that are visually composed through repetition, mirroring and multiplication.

Ruka’s art practice makes visible unseen spiritual and ancestral connections to land and place. The artist says, “The source of my creative process is Wairua (spirit); the inherent interconnection between the whenua (land) and tupuna (ancestors).”

Ki runga ki raro (2012), the linear projection work, translates as north and south or up and down is shot on ancestral land in two locations, Waipounamu, South Island and Hokianga in Northland. Ruka who initially trained as a painter, uses painting techniques to experiment with this familial footage, building layers, concealing and revealing certain elements of the screen that in turn play with the dimensions of the gallery. The resonating sound track is 3 generations of the artist’s family singing the word whenua (land) in different parts.

Ruka describes her filmic subject as catching the performance of the landscape as it unfolds. The work presented on the LCD screen, Takiwai (2011) required the artist to sit in the landscape for days. In these extended single framed shots, she collects the lyrical moments in the landscape, equating the movement of windblown grasses as brush strokes on the land. 

In Ruka’s most recent work, kaitiakitanga: ki runga ki raro (2012) she observes the role of guardianship, filming the protestors in the Aotearoa is Not For Sale march against the government’s proposal to sell public assets.  Again images are arranged with the visual principals of Māori weaving and carving patterns as Ruka wanted to look at the situation from a Māori perspective.

As an artist Ruka continually returns to Māori concept of time, space and place where past, present, future coexist. She says, “This installation is a coming together of my work - a visual conversation past present and future, like the Māori phrase i nga waa o mua from times in front. It refers to walking backwards into the future with our ancestors our history in front of us.”

Artist Biography

Tanya Ruka (Ngapuhi, Waitaha nui tonu) graduated from The University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 2010. Since graduating Ruka’s video projections have featured in national exhibitions and international film festivals including the 5^th Indigenous International Film Festival. In 2012 the artist completed a Master of Art and Design at AUT and plans to study further and apply for a doctorate.

some time
Gabby O’Connor

by Kathryn Tsui

Artist Gabby O'Connor has long been fascinated by the history and physical nature of Antarctica which she reconstructs in her latest installation, some time, a luminous multifaceted sculptural interpretation of the edge of the Antarctic Ross Ice Shelf at the point of collapse.

Made with thousands of tissue paper sheets the labour intensive installation has been entirely hand dyed and cut into individual geometric shapes, before being assembled. Painstakingly created some time represents the time it has taken to form the icy continent and now the speed at which it is melting. The materials of the installation being paper and light also reflect the immense and delicate ecosystem of Antarctica and the current effect of climate change.

some time plays with the architecture of the gallery, invading the space with a foreboding glacial cliff face. The artist says, “the angles and geometries are a space to contemplate the nature of ice, our position in the world and the space we inhabit and the edges potential to transform unexpectedly”.

O’Connor’s work reflects on Robert Falcon Scott and his crew's final and fatal expedition in Antarctica. The artist is intrigued by the Ross Ice Shelf for the slightly macabre fact that it will eventually calve off icebergs containing the bodies of Scott and his crew. In an earlier work, What lies beneath (2011) at the City Gallery Wellington, the artist constructed the rarely seen submerged part of an iceberg with the help of NIWA Oceanographer, Craig Stevens.

some time (2013)
Hand dyed and lacquered tissue paper, staples.

Artist biography
Gabby O’Connor is a Wellington based artist with a practice grounded in installation. The artist holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts. Since 1995 O’Connor has exhibited nationally and internationally in Japan, Canada, Holland, Australia and the UK. In 2011, she produced a solo exhibition What lies beneath at the City Gallery Wellington. This latest Antarctic installation is the first arts project in New Zealand to be funded by Boosted, a crowdfunding initiative for creative projects in New Zealand recently established by the Arts Foundation. O’Connor continues to collaborate with scientists and is currently working on a commission with award winning physicist Professor Shaun Hendy.

Artist acknowledgments
The artist would like to acknowledge the generous support of; the individual Boosted campaign funders, Shio Otani, Martin Kwok, Corban Estate Arts Centre, Craig Stevens, Ben Stevens, Katharine Allard and the installation volunteers; Elaine, Anne-Sophie, Jane l, Jane P, Francis, Alamein, Kenneth, Rainer, Urmilla, Vanessa, Jacqueline and Brigette.