Exhibition "ImMaterial" by Jennifer Halli & Antonia O'Mahony

Ngāmotu based Art Project Space, Might Could, is bringing back the artful social activist duo of Jennifer Halli and Antonia O’Mahony for “ImMaterial”, a collaborative community based printmaking project. One year in the making, over 100 hours in the community and 100 participants later, they have constructed an installation to highlight and honour the invisible and unpaid labour done in the domestic setting that is often perceived to have little commercial value.

For the past four months and with support from New Plymouth Creative Communities they spent time running workshops with the unsung heroes of invisible labour amongst groups such as: New Plymouth Women’s Centre, Bell Block Women’s Fellowship, Closely Knit and Migrant Women Meet at Puke Ariki Library, Flourish Taranaki Community Parenting Hub, Out of the Blue Studio, and Molly Ryan Lifecare. They were heartened to see the supportive gatherings and spaces for women to meet and share out in the wider community.

At each stop, they taught a portable, water-based, no-skill-necessary printmaking process. The imagery is based around household labour: a toilet brush, a woman making a bed, a gardening tool, food chopping, cat feeding, baby carrying. Collecting prints along the way, they have amassed over 500 handmade prints ready to create a monumental two-story sculpture to be installed in Might Could Art Project Space in Ngāmotu early September.

The sculpture, created with nearly 400 handmade prints, hangs 9 metres high, from floor to ceiling. Its form is reminiscent of a well, evoking the ancient task of water collection, which has forever been fundamental to domestic life, while its aim is to foreground the many hours of home-based labour that support our daily lives. The many hands that have spent hours in that domestic labour are the many hands that built this installation turning the invisible into the visible and the immaterial into material.

Might Could is usually open Sat/Sun 10am-1pm.