Sealed in a bell jar

Areta Wilkinson's Poi Girl series features silhouettes of the artist - notionally brooches - presented in bell jars. Poi Girl VIII (pictured above) sees Areta in profile tending a campfire. The metaphor of the campfire has appeared in a number of works, and her latest exhibition Waka Huia features the one pictured below as a brooch.

Called Areta's ahi kaa this work references the Maori metaphor of ahi kaa or keeping the home fires burning, the cultural fires fed, and the ancestral lands cared for.

Poi Girl VIII see Areta's literally tending the ahi kaa - maintaining and acknowledging her Ngai Tahu ancestry, but also her artistic heritage as a jeweller.

"I am telling you the things of old and smoking while I talk"

Included in Waka Huia is this cameo brooch work that features the head of Teone Taare Tikao (1850-1927), Areta Wilkinson's grandmother's granfather.

Around 1920 Herries Beattie interviewed Tikao about local knowledge and published the stories in "Tikao Talks: Treasures from the ancient world of the Maori" in 1939. From this we know that Tikao was taught that the world is round like a plate - flat and thick, and that the ancient songs say that the world is circular rimmed by sand, and outside and beyond this is space.

Areta explains "Poua Tikao may have understood the world as flat but by no means two dimensional - it was flat and thick and full. His world understood walking and talking flora and fauna, red sky portents, recited ancient whakapapa and karakia, interpreted dreams, understood seasons and preparations for survival, and politically advocated for Maori rangatiratanga.

He worked with poeople like Temaiharoa to prepare the world for modern Moari so his great great grandchildren could dwell in peace and security. How can I put my Poua's silhouette on a plate you ask? You may see a plate but I see a world."

Areta Wilkinson and the Contemporary Waka Huia

Areta Wilkinson is known for her exquisitely crafted jewellery. More recently she has blown out notions of jewellery as something wearable. Still under the guise of jewellery, the works have become the emblems of her own story as well as a wider narrative about contemporary Maori.

Her exhibition Waka Huia includes a gorgeous piece of colonial cabinetry - pictured above - and this acts as a contemporary (ironically) waka huia (treasure chest) and a display case. Inside are her collected stories emblemised as objects - the cowboy hat, the moa catcher, the wedding ring to name a few examples.

Interventions at Freyberg Pool

Victor Berezovsky's Portal intervention can now be seen on the facade of the Freyberg Pool in Wellington (pictured above). And what a journey to get it there!

Portal draws on the simplicity of the building’s design. It takes a key design element – the portal windows in the façade – and reactivates them to ensure the viewer reconsiders this aspect of the building’s design.



Portal is a temporary installation intended to complement and highlight the lines of the Freyberg building design - still fresh in the twenty-first century. But it also draws attention to the many signs, renovations and commercial add-ons that have marred its facade for some years.

Lonnie Hutchinson in silhouette

Lonnie Hutchinson's Can you see what I see opened this week at the gallery. The show get its title from one of the show's key works (pictured above with visiting celeb, Carmen).

The work, made from 20mm thick acrylic, seems to cross over into some new ground. We recognise Lonnie's language - the black and white, the silhouette - but here it's has become a screen reminiscent of Islamic architecture. It's a framed view into or out of a window that obscures and reveals...

... and Carmen was the perfect person to show this off.

Gary Freemantle and mud

Gary's new show Mud Monster literally uses mud as its primary medium. Gary started experimenting with mud in 2003 when it turned up on his doorstep after a flood in the town where he lived.

He started with landscapes (see below) but this new work deals with the figure, and includes a series of portraits that seems to disintegrate or fade out of the picture right before your eyes.

Looking for health

A visitor to the gallery over the weekend reminded me that Megan Campbell's latest work explores human notions of imperfection. Her paintings are full of figures looking for health - physical and mental - and ideas that will make them 'happy'.

In some paintings they look in places where nothing satisfactory is to be found - the past, the bottle - and in others parks, gardens, and domestic settings provide 'comfort'.

Nature and the natural world are important characters and backdrops in this nebulous search.