ARTISTS:

Kedron Parker, Sondra Bacharach & Lorenzo L Buhne

BIOS:

Kedron Parker is an artist based in Ōwhiro Bay, whose practice is collaborative, conceptual, and often includes elements of photography and video.

Dr. Sondra Bacharach is based in Island Bay and is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University.

Lorenzo L. "Cheech" Buhne is an award winning young photographer and is currently in year 10 at Wellington High School.

PROJECT:

Getting To Know You: 

Socially Distanced Portraits in the Time of Covid

SYNOPSIS:

• Getting to Know You begins with a 5-10 minute engagement with passers by, where we invite them to have a "check-in" about their experience with Covid.  
• We then ask "If you had to pick one word.... What would be your Covid Word?" as we continue our conversation reflecting on the multiple ways that Covid has has (and continues to) impacted our lives.
• We then invite them to paint the word on a sign, and be photographed with it.

This work was originally going to be a response to the confusion I felt in relation to the language associated with climate change. The adoption of the term Code Red left me with a sense of hopelessness and
disempowerment. I felt the world was fading; we were
tumbling into potential oblivion, however while creating the original work I saw David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, his legacy film to the world. He clearly explained the issue and proposed clear steps we can take to avert the impending climate disaster.

Sadly, while out with a small group a week later, two people, while discussing the film, stated they believe this is all a conspiracy and that what is happening in Pakistan and Europe is cyclable. We are going to go from a green world to a dead world by the next century unless we make some changes. 

Materials:  Repurposed wallpaper, card and florist materials and ink

Code Red For Humanity is a series of textile, paper and fibre works by 6 artists responding to the global climate crisis. On show in the Lightbox May to October, 2022. 

Barbara Wheeler - Lightbox Curator

Zealandia in Wellington is a protected habitat for endangered species that is critically important because of human impacts on nature.  As we live our lives alongside Zealandia, driving to and from across the city, who is enabling citizens to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?  And who remembers that there’s a global crisis anyway?  We are numb to it.

Code Red For Humanity is a series of textile, paper and fibre works by 6 artists responding to the global climate crisis. On show in the Lightbox May to October, 2022. 

Barbara Wheeler - Lightbox Curator

Artist Statement

The covid 19 pandemic has led to a huge increase in single use plastics including disposable masks, test kits, takeaway cups, lids and cutlery and packaging from online orders. This has contributed to an extra 8 million tons of plastic waste, with 25,000 tons of that entering the oceans. Sadly, masks, lids, floating plastic bags and gloves all look edible to seabirds such as Albatross, turtles and whales.

Materials: plastic and found objects

Code Red For Humanity is a series of textile, paper and fibre works by 6 artists responding to the global climate crisis. On show in the Lightbox May to October, 2022. 

Barbara Wheeler - Lightbox Curator

Materials::  Vintage Australia felt merino wool squares dyed using Eucalyptus mannifera and Eucalyptus globulus on mulberry silk handwoven by artist.

Artist Statement:

This piece is a reflection about the current state of the world. At the time of making, there was flooding for the second time in northern New South Wales, Australia and Russia had invaded Ukraine.  This work is inspired by a Ukrainian cross stitch pattern called ‘The Tree of Life’ with two birds, reflecting on my own Lao heritage and how often birds are used in all textile crafts from weaving to embroidery. Flowers and animals celebrate the turn of seasons, mark auspicious events and even indicate rank and beauty. These symbols are understood by the entire society and bestow poetry and magic upon the handmade textiles associated with rituals and celebrations such as Buddhist or lunar new year and weddings.

Birds are not depicted on clothes but rather towels or blankets for newlywed couples. Flowers and birds on cloth are ritual symbols and possess immortal beauty and power. Birds on cloth symbolise a change in season or waiting for news, possibly good news.

Code Red For Humanity is a series of textile, paper and fibre works by 6 artists responding to the global climate crisis. On show in the Lightbox May to October, 2022. 

Barbara Wheeler - Lightbox Curator

Women hold up 50% of the sky.  This collage brings Aotearoa New Zealand into the protector’s role, while it recognises that we are also contributing to the climate crisis.  This work encourages us to see our strength within.

Code Red For Humanity is a series of textile, paper and fibre works by 6 artists responding to the global climate crisis. On show in the Lightbox May to October, 2022. 

Barbara Wheeler - Lightbox Curator

Many fabrics start life as a tree - Viscose, Rayon, Lyocell, Modal and Tencel.  Every year, 150 million trees are cut down to create fabric.  A significant amount of the global viscose supply still originates from ancient and endangered forests.  

Don’t Mind The Forest is a reflection on the environmental price we are paying for our clothing and textiles.

Materials: Waste Fibre and Twig

Code Red For Humanity is a series of textile, paper and fibre works by 6 artists responding to the global climate crisis. On show in the Lightbox May to October, 2022. 

Barbara Wheeler - Lightbox Curator

The final installation in the Poetry Lightbox Series is by multimedia artist, writer and teacher Tabatha Forbes. Ground Goldfinch is a page from one of her journals, created using watercolour and ink on paper. This piece creates a window into Tabatha's practice, where for the last decade, she has been concerned with the way that we view, experience, and understand our natural environment.  Attracted to the period of history that notably changed the way that nature was perceived and valued in the South Pacific (with the introduction of colonialism), her work directly references that history by looking at the tradition of botanical and natural history art. As a contemporary interpretation, the work takes on many of the old aesthetics of that period, but always includes a conceptual evaluation of our ever-changing perception of nature. 

Having taught botanical art for the last two decades, she has developed a new teaching practice around ‘Nature Journaling’. Considered the foundation work for natural history and botanical illustration, Nature Journaling is an ancient creative practice that brings together the written and drawn observations.

Don't miss Tabatha's Nature Journal Weekend Workshop at HuttArt, Lower Hutt, Wellington, 18 + 19 June, 10 – 3 botanicalartclass@gmail.com.

The Poetry Lightbox Series is curated by Wellington poet Sarah Scott and showcases fragments of poems, erasure and collage from local writers responding to the natural environment in and around Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

The new installation in the Poetry Lightbox Series features a collaboration between Amber Brocklebank Davy and Meredith Brocklebank.

Amber is a recent graduate of the Elam School of Art Fine Arts program. Her work explores the boundary between computers and the 'real' physical world. She says, Meredith’s poem focuses on the feelings of summer with the hazy heat and hypnotising songs of cicadas. It felt only right to have the visualisation of the poem reflect this too. The rhythmic waves reference not only the sea (where we spend our summers) but also sheet music and rhythm. This rhythm was key to the sensory experience I wanted to invoke, having the viewers' eyes buzz as they read. The optical illusion lines make it feel like the kihikihi is in your brain.  

Meredith’s poetry has been exhibited at Studio One Toi Tu and she has published a children's book titled The Realm of the Golden Queen. A graduate of AUT Master of Creative Writing, she is currently working on her first novel. She says this poem is the soundscape of a trip to the beach. As I walked, I opened my senses to see if I could experience the beach in a new way. While watching oystercatchers I realised my brain had dulled the cicadas to the background when in reality they were loud and insistent. 

The Poetry Lightbox Series is curated by Wellington poet Sarah Scott and showcases fragments of poems, erasure and collage from local writers responding to the natural environment in and around Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

The new installation in the Poetry Lightbox Series features a poem fragment by Tessa Scott. Tessa completed her creative writing MFA at Sydney University after studying fine art and design. Her first poetry collection Dream Houses was published in California in 2019. She works as a designer and teaches poetry and English as a second language in Berlin and Hamburg, where she lives with her teenage son, comedian partner, nearly identical twin tabby cats and overgrown allotment.

She says, this poem fragment, crossed with two image cuttings, is called 'the flowering woman.' The first image is a colonial-era botanical sketch from the German Transport Museum in Berlin. This softly-lit watercolour of flowering pōhutakawa attracted my eye from across a darkened room crammed with model ships. The second image is a half-destroyed carved wooden statue of a woman, from the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest. The poem fragment is a line from a longer sequence called Bodies of Water, which uses the Beaufort Scale as an extended metaphor for transformation. In the flowering woman, putting two unrelated images together, transformed them and their proximity suggested the story of Daphne’s metamorphosis into a tree, from the myth of Daphne & Apollo. Somehow, from my current location, in the middle of the European response to the pandemic, I found Daphne’s self-protective shape-shifting to be a highly relatable response to an ever-present and swiftly morphing danger. So, in that sense, this image is a record of a state of becoming, in turn representative of the creative process to me. It’s a kind of mental, and spiritual flowering, when you hit your stride as an artist, hence the title. I’m so happy that this work can be on this wall in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, at this time.

This magpie collecting of fragments is my typical visual process, I’ll collect images that attract me, with no real intention. Only later in the process of sifting and sorting, will the true worth or meaning of an image be revealed. A sort of purposeful accident, but the point to me is to keep the eyes open to the world around us. That’s a fundamental difference for me between visual & verbal process. The verbal is much more intentional, and requiring of labour and attention. A lot of spit and polish goes into a poem, I never “hear” them in my head in the way I “see” visual work, often fully formed in my mind’s eye. The tension between these two worlds fascinates me.

The Poetry Lightbox Series is curated by Wellington poet Sarah Scott and showcases fragments of poems, erasure and collage from local writers responding to the natural environment in and around Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

Sam Duckor-Jones is an artist and writer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington and Mawhera/Greymouth.  He has published two poetry collections and is represented by Bowen Galleries.

Sam says, the brief for this project was to respond to Wellington's environment using fragments of poetry and drawing.  One of my favourite things to do is to eavesdrop in cafes and bars and on public transport.  I write everything down and sometimes these recordings can be turned into poems.  I have a thick file of revelations, gossip, news, plans, confessions, dates, observations, triumphs, disasters...  Many are plucked from...........Wellington's environment!  So I decided to plumb the archive for the right fragments that would fit this project and settled on two slices.  The first is a conversation overheard in a cafe at lunchtime: two ladies in their 70's worrying about a friend.  The second is a conversation overheard in a bar, late afternoon: four wedding photographers comparing stories and notes.  I then went into my other towering file: surplus monoprints.  And I cut them up.  I like how they can seem like glimpses of this and that - a little breeze, a passerby......an overheard conversation.  Isn't everything just one big collage anyway?  It all does look lovely today.  But before long the bits will come unstuck and float away to become new art or dust.

The Poetry Lightbox Series is curated by Wellington poet Sarah Scott. It showcases fragments of poems, erasure and collage by local writers, responding to the environment in and around Te Whanganui-a-tara.

Marina Lathouraki is a visual artist and writer. This piece is a combination of a line from a poem she wrote and some words she found in brochures about Wellington which she collaged into a new poem. The background is a print she made using sweet pea on a gelliplate with bronze paint.

Collage aesthetic focuses on the inherent poetic and artistic possibilities of the ordinary and found material. Marina has created through her poem-collage a juxtaposition of advertising text that references the natural world with her art-making techniques.

Collage as a way of presenting text is a wonderful hybrid art-poetry form. As American poet Alice Notley notes, ‘… the form, with the addition of a few cut-out words, felt almost like that of a poem … the feeling of using the hands and the feeling of saying things transfer back and forth between the two forms.’ (Alice Notley, My Fans, 'Poetry Magazine', Poetry Foundation, Aug 2019.)

The Poetry Lightbox Series is curated by Wellington poet Sarah Scott and showcases fragments of poems, erasure and collage from local writers responding to the natural environment in and around Te Whanganui-a-Tara.