Heidi Brickell, Haumiri-rau, 2021, Cotton duck, cotton thread from canvas edge, fluid acrylic, pigmented tempera oil pastel, rabbit skin glue. Courtesy of the artist and KAUKAU. Photo: Cheska Brown.
Photo Credit
KAUKAU presents He Pāoro Perea, a joint exhibition by Heidi Brickell & Maia McDonald. This is Maia’s third show with the gallery, and Heidi’s first show with KAUKAU.
He Pāoro Perea started with a conversation some months ago prior to the Tāmaki Makaurau lockdown, with both artists recognizing alluring relationships between their dynamic practices, and seeing the opportunity to develop this show together as the chance for a deeper wānanga around their shared explorations.
He Pāoro Perea relates to a kaupapa of both artists responding to a dynamic environment; shifts in winds and bouncing under-currents, past horizons of visibility and finding paths of discovery upon them. Pāoro refers to echoes, both audible, as in with sound, and physical, as with waves forming off of the contours of land masses. Perea means to pursue a vector or trajectory, as the ancestors who navigated Te Moana-Nui-ā-Kiwa to discover these Islands harnessed the flows within their world.
Maia has been interested in the kōwhaiwhai pattern since training with ceramic artist Wi Taepa. ‘While I was training with Wi, we were set the task of repeating the kōwhaiwhai pattern. So we had this locked into our muscle memory, never to be forgotten. We repeated the design in our sketchbooks over 100 times!’
Heidi speaks of a quest to recover an inheritance. She says ‘Mātauranga can be translated to knowledge, but it’s not so much a set of static objects, but a way of knowing. It’s knowing as a relationship, not just intellectual, but spiritual as well’.
KAUKAU presents He Pāoro Perea, a joint exhibition by Heidi Brickell & Maia McDonald. This is Maia’s third show with the gallery, and Heidi’s first show with KAUKAU.
He Pāoro Perea started with a conversation some months ago prior to the Tāmaki Makaurau lockdown, with both artists recognizing alluring relationships between their dynamic practices, and seeing the opportunity to develop this show together as the chance for a deeper wānanga around their shared explorations.
He Pāoro Perea relates to a kaupapa of both artists responding to a dynamic environment; shifts in winds and bouncing under-currents, past horizons of visibility and finding paths of discovery upon them. Pāoro refers to echoes, both audible, as in with sound, and physical, as with waves forming off of the contours of land masses. Perea means to pursue a vector or trajectory, as the ancestors who navigated Te Moana-Nui-ā-Kiwa to discover these Islands harnessed the flows within their world.
Maia has been interested in the kōwhaiwhai pattern since training with ceramic artist Wi Taepa. ‘While I was training with Wi, we were set the task of repeating the kōwhaiwhai pattern. So we had this locked into our muscle memory, never to be forgotten. We repeated the design in our sketchbooks over 100 times!’
Heidi speaks of a quest to recover an inheritance. She says ‘Mātauranga can be translated to knowledge, but it’s not so much a set of static objects, but a way of knowing. It’s knowing as a relationship, not just intellectual, but spiritual as well’.
