Local Geographies

In the context of Jane Bennett and Donna Haraway’s ‘new-materialist’ concepts of borderlands and the interaction between things that can create new understandings, this body of work yields a complex view of the Waikato landscape and makes manifest the relationships between process, gesture, environments and myself and in this way reveals experience of place in unexpected ways. 

The paintings were made in outside in places near Pirongia, Whaingaroa, Waireinga Falls and Ruapuke Beach over the course of 12 months and in a collaborative way that enabled the land to be a creative protagonist in the making of the work. 

Using a method of wrapping surfaces of the land with canvas and then brushing, pouring, rubbing and erasing ink and pigments across it’s undulating surface, the paintings record my encounters with these places over time and reveals exchanges between myself and the environments. While painting we have recorded the sounds of the making in the environments and this soundtrack accompanies the paintings in the exhibition space, drawing attention to the places and ways that the paintings were made and the connections between them, a lively ensemble and a broad ecological assemblage. 

Catalogue photography by Mark Hamilton
Exhibition photography by Geoff Ridder

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