The artworks have a playful, experimental feel. Nothing is too solid. The pieces could all be rearranged differently tomorrow.
The artworks have a playful, experimental feel. Nothing is too solid. The pieces could all be rearranged differently tomorrow.
OPINION
Betweenness. Not this, not that. If you're comfortable thinking about the world in ways that aren't black and white, then you may appreciate an art exhibition by Leonie Ngahuia Mansbridge at the Megan Dickinson Gallery in Whangārei.
Mansbridge was born in Aotearoa and is of Ngāti Maniapoto descent.She has, however, lived most of her adult life in Fremantle, Australia.
Her identity has roots in two geographical places, two nationalities, two cultures. Home is not straightforwardly here or there. There's a whakapapa on this side of the Tasman and a home, since the 1970s, amongst whānau on Australia's West Coast.
One work, in particular, tugged at the heartstrings, like most images of a child in the natural world do, because it connects with our own experiences of feeling small in a vast landscape.
The small works on display in the gallery, like Mansbridge herself, defy easy placement. Prolonged looking opens up a space of betweenness for reflecting on art, culture, identity, place, history and politics.
What you'll see is a series of mostly 1950s and 1960s dinner placemats with pictures of New Zealand on them. Touristy images of mountains and lakes, beaches and rivers, native flora and fauna. Some staged photos of Māori performing kapa haka.
Except you won't see the pictures on the placemats entirely, because they've been painted over in garish colours: pinks, mauves, oranges and greens. Or washes of gesso white.
Some have multicoloured dots dabbed over the photo images of famous New Zealand landmarks.
Plastic and sparkling lettering — like you can find at a $2 shop — have been added. Spelling out words: "Home", "Belonging", "Betweenness", "Aotearoa", "Tangata Whenua."
On some works, the words are spelt using Scrabble tiles. Suggesting that language is a kind of game.
If the placemats are distinctly European in cultural value and speak of colonisation and silencing, they also hold sentimental value as memories of home and whānau.
The artworks have a playful, experimental feel. Nothing is too solid. The pieces could all be rearranged differently tomorrow.
There is, though, something destructive about covering placemats with paint, scrapbooking tat, and masking tape in some instances.
You could imagine if, as a child, you'd painted over your mother's prized dinner placemats. Or messily stuck glitter and fluro plastic letters to them.
Many of the placemats that Mansbridge has painted and crafted for a new purpose were indeed her mother's.
This gets to the heart of an ambiguity in these works.
On the one hand, touristy images of Mount Egmont (before it was renamed Mount Taranaki) speak of a colonising European culture overlaying its story over that of Māori.
The scenes of New Zealand on these placemats, like on much tourist iconography today, renders the landscape merely beautiful. Something to look at.
The stories and history of the Taranaki maunga belonging to local iwi and hapū are in no way conveyed by a picture of the mountain glued to a corkboard backing.
Yet the placemats were treasured by Mansbridge's mother. They are therefore treasured also by the artist.
If the placemats are distinctly European in cultural value and speak of colonisation and silencing, they also hold sentimental value as memories of home and whānau.
That's the space of betweenness, not this, not that. Mansbridge's artworks are both a critique of colonisation and acceptance of an identity that comes out of that process and history.
There's no anger or resentment that I can detect in these works. Those are valid emotions when it comes to the ongoing impacts of colonisation, but they're not part of this exhibition.
The placemats were treasured by Mansbridge's mother. They are therefore treasured also by the artist.
There's something else going on here also. It's us. It's what we as viewers bring to the works that Mansbridge has created from materials, memories, ideas and feelings that are important to her.
Once in the public realm, the viewer gets to participate in creating the artwork. We bring our own creative minds to them.
One work, in particular, I was taken with. The placemat is a photo of a very European-looking girl in a red jacket standing on the rocky edge of a lake or river. Round plastic jewels are stuck over the lower half of the image. A cloud of globulous pink weighs over the distant hills in the photo. Above the child, a tiny tiki is glued in the sky.
It tugs at the heartstrings, like most images of a child in the natural world do, because it connects with our own experiences of feeling small in a vast landscape. We can each imagine being that child, experiencing that solitude.
The tiny plastic tiki, that staple of tourist kitsch, probably made in China, somehow still speaks of something authentic. That there's something in Māori culture available to that little girl that can help us live in this land.
That's what we're trying to do by celebrating Matariki for the first time as an official national holiday.
Tiki Tour runs until July 12 at the Megan Dickinson Gallery, 10-12 Rust Ave, Whangārei. Gallery hours: Tues-Fri, 10am-4pm, Saturday, 10am-2pm. Website: mdgallery.co.nz
