TAMING MESS: REMEMBERING GESTURE THROUGH PAINTING
Te Wai Ngutu Kākā, Gallery One, 40 St Paul Street, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
Te Wai Ngutu Kākā, Gallery One, 40 St Paul Street, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
My graduating exhibition of a practice-led MVA in painting examined body-based memory acquired through repetitive care practices and affective relations with domestic surfaces. I drew from years of experience with sensory actions like wiping with sponges and cloths and using scrubbing tools. By letting go of working with traditional painting brushes, I prioritised haptic senses to experience subconscious body-held and felt learning. This internal knowledge emerged as expressive painted abstractions, traces of a unique visual language encoded with affect relations. During making and taming messy mediums, I explore and control states of wildness. My encounters with surfaces are events where I focus on close touch-making, borrowing colours and working with and against abjection. Through my process and paintings I whisper, shout, state, argue and question notions of care, ownership and agency.