When I was going through the exploration phase of conventional painting and I stumbled onto imprinting into kōkōwai, I was applying the pigment to A3 art paper so I didn’t think initially about going larger. For this series I am happy with my decision to stick to small mounds for the small whānau taonga I will be using, but I am really enjoying this process and think I will continue to use it so wanted to look at others who had presented mounds of some sort as art pieces.
Elliot Glenn Punahau Collins
Rawhaki/Massed, heaped up, 2018. Harakeke seeds, endless supply.
I saw this piece in an exhibition at Toi Poneke, the entire exhibition, ‘Te Reo Pākehā’, he’d put together with Mac Langdon was so well put together. I finally felt what it was like to really feel and understand an entire exhibition without having to read the wall labels, it penetrated deep into the difficult places of history for Māori, and made us acknowledge the mamae. I will never forget this exhibition, and I will never forget the mass of harakeke that looked to just grow from under the wall and the fact you could take some of it away to plant and start a new piece with.
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono – To The Light (Installation View), Serpentine Gallery 2012
My google search popped up this installation of Yoko Ono’s, three mounds of earth sitting straight on the gallery floor, named Country A, Country B and Country C. Each mound is identical, Artseater.com says it’s likely showing that all countries are the same at the core. From my indigenous view point, I wonder if it’s about how non-indigenous see all land as just land, and how they feel they can take it and move it with the right amount of money. Most likely Artseater.com is correct as Yoko Ono’s life was more about striving for world peace.
Terence Koh
The google search isn’t a quick and easy research method for this type of search, but a day of using many different sentence searches does seek out more and more artists showing mounds of some sort as ephemeral art. One that really caught my eye due to the striking white on white on white, was this work of Terence Koh’s. It’s a massive cone of salt, he moved around it on his knees, not his hands and knees but just knees, every opening hour of the gallery it was shown in, 8 hours a day, five days a week! He is walking on his knees for peace. Is it for world peace or inner peace? What ever it’s for it would be painful, but maybe that’s the point, that it’s painful fighting or waiting for peace.
TOI BY TESSA 