PAKANGA FOR THE LOSTGIRL

PAKANGA FOR THE LOSTGIRL by Heidi Brickell (Te Hika o Papauma, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Kahungunu, Rangitāne, Rongomaiwahine) is made up of painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. Brickell’s project is conceptually founded in the whare structure, as a space which synthesises visual, oral, metaphorical and spatial languages. It is also about our internal landscape, and how this informs how we relate to the world.

Originally developed by Brickell with Cameron Ah Loo-Matamua, curator at St Paul St Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau, PAKANGA FOR THE LOSTGIRL has been reconfigured for The Physics Room in Ōtautahi, and another work added. Kūtorohia these uaua (2022) hangs at the threshold of the gallery, large and green as a moss-covered rock. Its title refers to the clenching of muscles, and is intended to mark the entry into the gallery space, initiating an energetic shift.

Triangular pieces of ply are suspended vertically from the ceiling almost reaching to the floor. Painted on both sides, these works are punctured, washed with pigment, layered with canvas, lined with string and glue, and threaded through by rākau on which the work is balanced.

A series of ladder forms also connect ceiling to floor, and each rākau or ‘rung’, is bound with coloured cotton, beeswax and glue. These works occupy the space architecturally, compelling the viewer to move across multiple lines of sight, so that the act of looking becomes physical and involves the whole body.

Brickell speaks about the whare whakairo Ihenga, carved by Lyonel Grant for the Waiariki Polytechnic in Te Arawa, as having a significant impact on her thinking. “The capacity of this whare to travel your mind and integrate so many threads of connection to stories and sensibilities past and present is something incredible.”

“The way a wharetipuna functions as a sort of a psychological space, albeit a shared, communal one, is something I’m figuring out in my more personal practice. How art can reflect an authentic mind-space as someone living simultaneously in Māori and Pākehā worlds.”

Language, translation and transformation, is also foundational in this exhibition. The title, PAKANGA FOR THE LOSTGIRL, makes reference to the hinengaro, or the mind-heart continuum. Held within the single Māori kupu are the words for ‘girl’ and ‘lost’. These are ideas or images that the artist continues to reflect on in relation to living within two languages.