Aniwaniwa: Brett Graham & Rachael Rakena
Aniwaniwa
Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena
23 February – 15 June 2008
Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena, Still from Aniwaniwa, 2007. Courtesy the artists, Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland and Bartley & Company Art, Wellington.
Aniwaniwa--te hokinga mai. The stunning large-scale collaborative art work by Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena comes to City Gallery Wellington direct from a triumphant showing at the 52nd Venice Biennale.
Central to the work is the theme of submersion, as a metaphor for cultural loss. Locally, Aniwaniwa refers to rapids at the narrowest point of the Waikato River by the village of Horahora, where Graham’s father was born and his Grandfather worked at the Horahora power station. In 1947 the town was flooded to create a hydro-electric dam downstream. Many historic sites significant to Graham’s hapu ‘Ngati Koroki’ were lost forever.
In Aniwaniwa water as the consumer of histories becomes the vehicle by which histories are retold. In many of Rachael Rakena’s works Māori identity is explored as being in a state of flux, which like the borders of a river, are constantly being redefined. Likewise, water is churned into electricity; electricity is transformed into light. Light makes such a work possible, and in a sense returns to a new generation memories of a town now consumed by water. In the video images, the villagers go about their lives and daily tasks even though their town now exists only underwater. They have been preserved, their actions forever suspended in space and time, in pools that defy gravity. The vessels that contain them are like wakahuia, keepers of precious memories. They are covered in a pattern that suggests the gnawed paths of insects, gouging through wood and hence the origins of the word ‘whakairo’ (to carve, or literally, be like a maggot). This is reminiscent of the legend that the art of carving was itself retrieved from under the water, from the sacred house of Tangaroa.
The soundtrack features two of Maoridom’s most established and celebrated singers, Whirimako Black and Deborah Wai Kapohe together with electronic musician, Paddy Free.
Aniwaniwa at the 52nd Venice Biennale was curated by Alice Hutchison, Milovan Farronato, Viafarini, Milan, Camilla Seibezzi, Plug Non-Profit, Venice. Supported by Nga Pae o Te Maramatanga, Te Puni Kokiri, The Todd Trust, Creative New Zealand, Two Rooms, Bartley & Company Art, Seresin Estate, OMBRA, BYBLOS, Saatchi & Saatchi.
Principal Sponsor: Ernst & Young