TERRITORY OF EROSION
Arwen Flowers & Kristen Calder
Arthaus Orakei, 228 Orakei Road, Remuera, Auckland
12 May - 1 June, 2025.
Arwen Flowers & Kristen Calder
Arthaus Orakei, 228 Orakei Road, Remuera, Auckland
12 May - 1 June, 2025.
Through their respective practices, Calder and Flowers work with territory – that of the maker's body, surfaces and place. While working with clay and paint, each artist responds to the hapticity of their materials. Body-based feedback, as the sensory assimilation of the body's discernment, is acquired through the extent of movement, touch, and sight.[1] Throughout the process of making, their authentic human touch leaves traces like a maker's mark in the terrain of clay, glaze or paintwork. Both Calder and Flowers are affected by immersion in environments they encounter, from natural earth formations in the wilds to the interiors of suburban domestic housing.
By making this new collection of ceramics and paintings, Calder and Flowers pivot away from prioritising evidence of their maker's marks and use methods and processes that explore erosion as it occurs through the absence of human touch or action. Moved by what we often consider neglectful, derelict states, Calder and Flowers propose that this is a transformative condition with value.[2] The artists enter this indeterminate space by surrendering their careful control of materials, surfaces and actions.[3] By yielding familiar, intentional methods that produce expected results, the work that emerges feels like it has unfolded precariously in unstable conditions.[4]
These two artists' ceramics and paintings are situated in the margin between abjection and the sublime, neglect and nature. This transformative space, where the artists let go of creative intention, allows nature to assert itself as they explore the condition of erosion, its cycles and boundaries, inside built environments and natural landscapes, as within ourselves. The formed clay pieces and contemporary paintings question what is valuable and desirable within a broader context of human-environment relations. This exhibition considers the purpose and intent of our relationship with the territories we inhabit. Through their making and installation process, Calder and Flowers confront erosion as an action, attitude and experience to find value in the chaos of degenerative or uncontrolled states.
[1] Giuliana Bruno, Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014): http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/aut/detail.action?docID=3038578
[2] ‘We are eroding and evolving, at once.’
“Erosion Essays of Undoing, Williams, Terry Tempest. | Auckland Libraries.” Accessed December 12, 2024. https://discover.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/search/card?id=293cce28-b035-5a45-ad3c-c86f2582098f&entityType=FormatGroup. Page 20.
[3] ‘…let our stories remain open-ended and unfinished, much like the geological timescale, or the current advancing edge of evolution.’
Allen, Ruth. Weathering, 2024. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/454784/weathering-by-allen-ruth/9781529902631. Page 203.
[4] ‘…explore indeterminacy and the conditions of precarity, that is, life without the promise of stability.'
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. “Prologue.: Autumn Aroma.” In The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, 1–9. Princeton University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc77bcc.4.
By making this new collection of ceramics and paintings, Calder and Flowers pivot away from prioritising evidence of their maker's marks and use methods and processes that explore erosion as it occurs through the absence of human touch or action. Moved by what we often consider neglectful, derelict states, Calder and Flowers propose that this is a transformative condition with value.[2] The artists enter this indeterminate space by surrendering their careful control of materials, surfaces and actions.[3] By yielding familiar, intentional methods that produce expected results, the work that emerges feels like it has unfolded precariously in unstable conditions.[4]
These two artists' ceramics and paintings are situated in the margin between abjection and the sublime, neglect and nature. This transformative space, where the artists let go of creative intention, allows nature to assert itself as they explore the condition of erosion, its cycles and boundaries, inside built environments and natural landscapes, as within ourselves. The formed clay pieces and contemporary paintings question what is valuable and desirable within a broader context of human-environment relations. This exhibition considers the purpose and intent of our relationship with the territories we inhabit. Through their making and installation process, Calder and Flowers confront erosion as an action, attitude and experience to find value in the chaos of degenerative or uncontrolled states.
[1] Giuliana Bruno, Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014): http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/aut/detail.action?docID=3038578
[2] ‘We are eroding and evolving, at once.’
“Erosion Essays of Undoing, Williams, Terry Tempest. | Auckland Libraries.” Accessed December 12, 2024. https://discover.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/search/card?id=293cce28-b035-5a45-ad3c-c86f2582098f&entityType=FormatGroup. Page 20.
[3] ‘…let our stories remain open-ended and unfinished, much like the geological timescale, or the current advancing edge of evolution.’
Allen, Ruth. Weathering, 2024. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/454784/weathering-by-allen-ruth/9781529902631. Page 203.
[4] ‘…explore indeterminacy and the conditions of precarity, that is, life without the promise of stability.'
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. “Prologue.: Autumn Aroma.” In The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, 1–9. Princeton University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc77bcc.4.
Arwen Flowers, Detail of painting in progress, 2024.
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Kristen Calder, Close up of Kaipara Slip Burn, 2024. Pit fired ceramics.
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