Performance at City Gallery Wellington, for exhibition Tilia. 2022 

Images by Sara Tansy.

Notes:

 Performance and the presence of the live performer's body conducts agency and accountability within the performer, the audience and space. Hendrix Hennessy-Ropiha and Dayle Palfreyman’s work in the Tilia exhibition both conducts a similar agency in viewers' connection bodies to place and space.

Melting Monoliths as my performance response introduces the body and the whenua to the space which has previously been absent of both (no organic matter in the gallery - sensored nudity.) 

My work resolves a hedonistic desire to both interact and insert myself into the spaces created by Hendrix and Dayle. The curiosity of wondering what it would feel like to lay upon the hand-crafted nails or see someone do it is satisfied through the practice of laying upon the ice structures, at a distance from the ground. The enduring process of melting and transforming the ice is a familiar painful yet patient process, attempting to create a safe and nourishing space for ngā rākau to drink the water. 

I consider this mahi as a response also to the whakatauki ‘Whatungarongaro te tangata toitū te whenua’ as people disappear from sight, the land remains.

Kia ora koutou.

Contextualising the performance:

 Ngā rākau. The plants.

I have worked with nga rākau to provide a boundary between myself and the Gallery. I have spent this past week with these plants asking them to protect me and preparing them to return to the whenua. 

Ngā rākau are a gift and responsibility to City Gallery. I hope they accept and make space to plant, nurture and cultivate their relationship with the whenua. 

The ice

The blocks of cold, rigid monolithic stature mimic the architecture of institutional spaces. Often spaces that are cold and alienate those who do not reap the privileges of colonialism and patriotism. 

The body

An agent of change, Made of warm tender flesh. A Pākehā body, a female body, a queer body maneuvers its way through the structures of ice attempting to transform them into wai. Water that can feed ngā rākau, water with its own agency that inevitability threatens to consume the land and leaky the Gallery itself.