Arawhiti Āniwaniwa

Arawhiti Āniwaniwa Rainbow Bridges

Arawhiti Āniwaniwa refers to bridges, ladders or steps and rainbow, together making ‘Rainbow Bridges.’ This is a theme for a series of works and events, which include Kāhili, installed at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery for a period of five years. Arawhiti Āniwaniwa are intended to bridge Moana culture to Western culture without recourse to logic and rationality, and be accessible by all ages and genders – this was prompted by Kawaihululani. Developing the intuitive resource is important to nourishing the human connection to environment, as clearly rational statistics are insufficent to being about substantive change.

Discussion of rainbows led to an investigative period with prisms and revisiting previous works exploring light. There is also a sense of Rainbow that intersects identity. So there is a tripartite meaning here: from visible light to intuition to identity.

This is a texture made of multiple prism experiments. The spectra above are generated by cut glass prisms. One form the prisms, acrylic with three wide faces can encompass the field of vision and were used in the Family Art workshops at the Govett Brewster.

Kāhili

Figure 128
Kāhili, 2022
Digital print on transparent vinyl, blessed on Friday December 2nd 2022, five year commission, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery-Len Lye Centre

Note. The transparency of the media is revealed in the vertical line running behind the image, made by the building superstructure. The curved exterior of the Govett-Brewster-Len Lye Centre can be seen in the curved line between the Golden Plover and the Hitiaurevareva rose form. While this media has limited capacity for recycling (requiring sending overseas), the five year period of the commission is regarded as a mitigating factor in using the product. Any methodology using transportation and computers is entangled in resource complexity, and today I seek a balance between technology and nature. Photo by the artist-writer.

Figure 129
Toi Ma Whanau Family Art Workshop, 2023
Sunday 25th June 2023

Note. While it is fairly customary for artist-writers to propose workshops to exhibition venues coinciding with exhibtions and installations, the Toi Ma Whanau event was concieved as part of an intergenerational approach which envelops my creative project activity and stretches from tupuna (ancestors) to future generations.

Ellie Field of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery conceives of the Toi Ma Whanau events not as ‘workshops for children’ but rather as quality time for families. So parents attend the session. Participants have a free range of expression, with the set activity providing a window into potentials. In this situation, I brought along the field-enveloping acrylic prisms so the participants could look through them. Wherever there is a change in light levels, the prisms throw a spectrum (around lights, but also where colours contrast in art images for example). This experience is used to inform what the participants want to do. One made a rainbow light shade, while others coloured give away images in rainbow dyes (birds were popular).

Figure 130
Mātua Senior Session, 2023
Friday 21st July 2023

Note. These mātua are basically people interested in new ideas and perspectives, amny are highly experienced in their fields and now have discretionary time to pursue interests. They make for an interesting an engaged audience, and are also an important testing ground for bringing research from the PhD into the public arena beyond academia. Once again the determination to engage with seniors arises out of the wider creative context of engaging whakapapa in my practice.

Arawhiti Āniwaniwa

Figure 131
Arawhiti Āniwaniwa Series 2A, 2022
Affinity Designer Digital Image

Note. The Arawhiti Āniwaniwa series utilise elements of the visual vocabulary developed for the PhD project and outlined in Chapter Four of the exegesis. The aim here is to combine this imagery with rainbow spectra, in a way that that can be transformed to any shape and dimension. The diagonal pairs of odd looking ovals are sourced in the imagery of tupuna – they are found in the tiputa (poncho like garment) of Figure 23 in the thesis. I also see these pairs as tracks fo the waka horua (double hulled canoe) which refers to both ocean going waka and is a Moana symbol for my identity. Affinity Designer software is spectacularly good at high precision scaling, enabling working from 1millimetre to building scale.

Figure 132
Arawhiti Āniwaniwa Series 2B, 2022
Affinity Designer Digital Image

Note. In this work, the vocabulary and whakapapa/waka horua tracks are again expressed, with an investigation of boundary conditions involving an imprecision in form as an expression of emergence.

Black Holes

Figure 133
Matariki, 2023
Affinity Designer Digital Image

Note. This work was specifically made for Matariki and features the nine stars of Māori cosmology rather than the seven of Pleiades or Subaru. This image won second prize in the 2023 AUT Matariki Award.