True view gained inside patterns

Filipe Tohi with a tapa cloth-wrapped mummy at the Whitespace gallery. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

When Filipe Tohi stands on the beach near his New Plymouth home, throwing stones into the water, he is adding to tradition. They are some of the makakupesi, andesite stones Tahi has picked off the beach and carved into human or god-like shapes.

"I think some day someone walking along the beach will find them," says Tohi, whose sculptures and paintings are on display at Whitespace at the city end of Crummer Rd until March 17.

Perhaps some might drift back to Tongatapu, the island Tohi left in 1978, aged 19, to find work in New Zealand. After a succession of factory jobs, he ended up in Taranaki in 1983 working on a carving scheme.

That led him to explore one of the most basic components of the Pacific world, lalava.

"In English that means lashing, but from a Tongan view, lalava is more than binding, it is the history and the patterns. It's like you have 10 basic patterns, and then you can make an infinite number of variations from that," Tohi says.

In a Pacific which did not know nails, string made from sennit or coconut fibre bound together houses, boats, islands and societies.

"I use lalava because it is about the intersection of space, and it creates space."

Tohi sees something universal about lalava patterns. Three of the works in the Rhythms: Lalavaometry show are based on Egyptian mummies, an interest sparked by his realisation that they used similar binding techniques.

One is wrapped in white and black cotton, making a diamond pattern. Another two are wrapped in traditional tapa cloth and sennit string.

Around the walls are paintings in which Tohi breaks down the patterns made from lalava, as if he were taking a sectional slice through a Polynesian fale. The spaces become charged negative and positive. Other paintings reference the twisting of fishing nets.

Tohe wants to explore what is on the other side of the pattern.

"Painting is a journey to see how your eyes adapt. It is an illusion of things. My painting is more pattern, how you see and apply it. To me, you have to see the inside the pattern - it may not be just two-dimensional.

"What you see is not the same as what you see on the other side. We know what a chequerboard looks like, but do we really know what is on the other side?"

On the gallery's window wall, Tohi has drawn a lalava pattern, as cool and elegant as a Sol Le Wit wall drawing.

The roots of modernism included a re-evaluation of the "primitive" artworks which filled the trophy cabinets of the imperial museums.

Raids on such museums in Paris gave Cubists such as Picasso and Braque raw material for their revolution in painting and sculptural space.

"The Pacific always has been cubism and other geometric things. The Western world studied the Pacific because the primitive was becoming interesting, but this is the traditional world for us," Tohi says.

Fingering a string-wrapped piece of wood around his neck, he says what was seen as primitive disguised a sophisticated world view encompassing engineering, construction, mathematics and navigation.

"It is only a piece of string, but this is my computer."

Tohi believes his work will be seen as traditional if he does enough of it and gets his ideas out.

"When the people enter into my world, what I am learning about, this will create artistic doors for themselves.

"I am there to open the door. If they understand the system, anyone else can do it."

Exhibition

* What: Rhythms: Lalavaometry, by Filipe Tohi

* Where and when: Whitespace, 12 Crummer Rd, to Mar 17