A visit to Te Uru contemporary art gallery last weekend, 29 April
THE KAURI PROJECT: A DELICATE BALANCE
Inhabiting the space where concepts of art, science and cultural knowledge intersect, The Kauri Project is a curatorial endeavour which examines the relationship between people and landscape, focusing on our unique and threatened indigenous kauri forest ecology. Encompassing performance, sound, photography and sculptural installation, A Delicate Balance explores how we ‘listen’ and speak back to this environment, bringing together new and existing work by artists from Northland, Auckland and Taranaki.
Will Ngakuru’s installation - the suspended tree and connected diorama boxes - was a stand-out piece for me, but photos can’t do it justice.
Jewellery and utensils by Rachel Bell
IOIOIOIOIOIO: FRED HARRISON AND TRACEY TAWHIAO
Most world traditions insist that there is a hidden order that unifies all aspects of the Universe. Some of these visualisations take the form of developing mandalas, such as the Sri Yantra formation. Others prefer to engage in dances where the movements and music are in tune with these geometric patterns. Still others prefer to assemble, sculpt or draw these forms, whose cornerstone of knowledge is embedded in sacred geometry.
Using the languages of geometry, sound, and binary code, Māori artists Tracey Tawhiao and Fred Harrison depict the Creator, known in Te Ao Māori as IO, through sacred geometry that exudes mātauranga Māori; the knowledge originating from the ancestors.
