Priorities, Charlotte Posenenske and Peter Robinson at Artspace.

10th February - 6th April, 2024

Priorities, Charlotte Posenenske and Peter Robinson, Artspace, installation view, 2024.

This year, the question being explored through each exhibition at Artspace is, "Do I need territory?". Both Posenenske (1930-1985) and Robinson explore systems of assembly, seriality, and repetition in ways that interrogate the social, political, and cultural aspects of space and place. The works installed in this show produce space and conjure a body in relation.

As the exhibition text explains “In this artworld-in-the-world we are invited to consider our bodies in relation to edges, where one thing ends, and another begins. This activates the spacio-political quality of time with both artists tapping into this ambiguity: time as a monetizable measure, as an expressive singularity, as a language.”

Posenenske withdrew from the artworld completely in 1969 to study the sociology of labour and work with unions. After her death from cancer in 1985, her second husband continued to manage her artwork under a strict set of rules that they were not to be made available for private or sole ownership, but for public display only. Made primarily from folded cardboard held together with plastic studs, her work can be cheaply mass produced and re-configured to activate any space.

“Robinson’s knotted grids require both positive and negative forces to stay together. Timing and tension can be everything: what is the best way to express the creative and political potential of the imagination? What is the best way to connect? … This exhibition dives into form: waka, or tongues, or chimneys, or motorways, as well as the labour that it takes to produce all of this – our world, in which we live together.”

Space, place, and connection are the key motivators of my own work so this was an important exhibition for me. It had me considering edges, connections, and the body in relation as I was making my larger works. The soft, tactile edges of Robinson’s die-cut felt and the hard, uncompromising edges of Posenenske’s corrugated cardboard and the way that my work combines the two. There are softer curves held by tension with hard lines and corners. How they connect has become just as vital a component of the work as how they hold space and place.

Here You Are, Judy Millar at Michael Lett Gallery

9th March - 20th April, 2024

Judy Millar, From The Same Side, From The Other Side, From Any Side, 2023

Acrylic and oil on canvas

1800 x 1250 x 35mm

I went along to Judy's talk with Katharina Grosse at Michael Lett. She spoke about these paintings being very much about place. They were inspired by a visit to see the Maori cave drawings in South Canterbury and the way that the drawings captured a moment in space and time. There is a big historical gap between the making of the drawings and the present time of viewing. A gap that has to be filled with theorising and imagining the who and why. The drawings put the viewer in a place for a moment, or maybe an extended moment, and she wanted to achieve the same thing with these paintings. The cross shape in the foreground centers the viewer in front of the painting, and the large scale draws you in to the space created by the misty background and the gestural mid-ground.

She used the phrase 'normalising wonder' and spoke about having to suppress the will in order to make art because the will wants to do what it can do well, so it can lead an artist to repeat.

She said that there is always a gap between thinking and experience in art. I've been noticing that with making larger work there is also a gap between thinking and making. I suspect that gap is much smaller for Judy Millar because her process is so direct with paint on canvas. It would take her a matter of seconds to think of a gesture then create it (or remove it), but for me it can take up to half an hour of hard physical work to cut out one large piece, then more hours to experiment with it to see how it might move and interact with other pieces. Working smaller, the gap between thinking and making is much smaller.

"Painting at the service of gestures, for Millar space becomes a surface to be painted, one which can grow, extend and occupy built environments. Taking up space, works by Millar are often large-scale, engaging with installation they dwarf those who encounter them, acting as a reminder that people belong to gestures and that painting can be a shift away from the self." (From the exhibition document).

Fibrous Soul, Sorawit Songsataya and Maata Wharehoka, at Govett Brewster, New Plymouth.

2 March - 16 June 2024.

Sorawit Songsataya, Song of Songs 2024, Oamaru stone, rattan,

sedge mats, aluminium tube, dried plants.

Sedge matt weaving by Saard Kanaanan, Nittaya Satjamapourn,

Jurairat Sappasuk, Kritsana Saiyawan.

Maata Wharehoka, Ngati Tahinga, Ngati Koata, Ngati Apakura, Ngati Toa, Ngati Kuia, Hidden

Muka, 2024. Harekeke, muka, manuka wood, stone.

"Including recent and new works by Sorawit Songsataya, alongside a new installation by Maata Wharehoka, Fibrous Soul considers the many ways states of transition and the passage of time are measured and registered. The exhibition thinks across multiple scales - from the perspective of an individual life, and the network of relationships that makes living possible, to the slow-moving geological cycles of formation, attrition, and renewal of the whenua beneath out feet." (From the exhibition document by Simon Gennard, Assistant Curator Contemporary and Collections)

This exhibition resonated on the fringe of my thinking in terms of encountering place, connection, and absence, but was far more deeply rooted in cultural practice, musical codes, time, and spirituality. Possibly more to delve into here for some of my cohort. Still, beautiful work and always worth seeing.