Aniwaniwa: arts@work’s reviews

The reviewers are: Stephenie Cahalan, Anica Boulanger-Mashberg, Kylie Eastley, Mark Cutler and Gai Anderson.

Show name: Aniwaniwa
By: Brett Graham and Rachel Rakena
Venue: The Barn, Rosny
Dates: 20 March to 13 April
Reviewer: Stephenie Cahalan

The underwater world is the stuff of mythology: mermaids, the lost city of Atlantis, sirens luring sailors to the murky depths. But these are very Euro-based legends and the excitement of Aniwaniwa is that it creates an underwater mystery located in the context of a rural landscape.

Aniwaniwa is the combined work of two Maori artists: the projections of Rachel Rakena set into five pod-like sculptures by Brett Graham that act as screens fixed to the roof. The viewer suffers no straight-backed chairs or aching necks as they watch from the reclining comfort of soft mattresses and pillows. The Rosny Barn, the colonial stone building that hosts the exhibition, is darkened save for shafts of light entering through the open vents by the roof.

The work would appeal to various interests, but not with the same impact across the board. For a videographer or film-lover, the fifteen-minute film piece that depicts the life of residents of a town that has been inundated by water would be curious for the technique and effect of the underwater scenes: surreal images of a woman taking nappies off the washing line, someone trying to strike a match, a man wielding a spade, boys making their way with a suitcase have a dream-like quality.

If you are a musician, the soundscape is a compelling combination of traditional Maori songs, industrial noise and voice that alternates between keening and a tranquil chanting melody.

However, if you like the visual arts or sculpture, you would be disappointed that the room is just too dark to see the screen-housing sculptures, which is a disservice to an artist who is so highly regarded for his expertise in carving and sculpture.

In an adjoining building is an extensive interpretation of the inspiration for the work, the making of both the video and screen pods and some historical footage of the cultural context of the work, i.e. the flooding of a hydro-town and the turbine that was the source of employment and identity for the residents. Historical photos, stories of Brett Graham’s ancestors, even photos of the production at the 2007 Venice Biennale, are worth seeing to get insight into the exhibition and the people who created it.

For many visitors the actual projections and screen capsules will be just one part of the installation. They are a creative interpretation of a fascinating story that lends a critical dimension to the work. However, to me work should not be separated from the accompanying story, because it is the story of displacement. There is a curious irony attached to the story of a group people who experience loss through the flooding of their valley for a hydro-electricity compound even though the very existence of their town had been made by the very same process of dam-building and electricity generation. This is a conversation that could add to the experience of the work, but which would be lost if the viewer had not found their way to interpretation – it prompts the question of whether the art should stand on its own. The cleverness of the installation comes from its manifestation of that old story told in fifteen minute video. Without the associated story the art is just quirky video, nicely set.

Stephenie Cahalan is a Hobart-based writer and editor.

Reviewer: Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
517 words

Lying Down on the Job
Lying on my back in the dark between the heavy sandstone walls, I am wondering about art. I am watching the surreal images of a waterlogged village above me. Of children blinking in slow, waterspeed-motion. Of a woman unpegging white sheets from a washing line while all – sheets, pegs, woman – are entirely submerged. Of a man attempting to strike a match from within the midst of fire’s natural enemy.

Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena’s large-scale work presents a cycle of video images on five suspended porthole-like structures in the semi-darkness of the Rosny Barn. The images, and the soundtrack which swells to fill the space, are quite beautiful. But, unless you know the narrative behind their creation, quite meaningless. I don’t mean to suggest that art must possess and communicate incontrovertible “meaning” in order to be valid. But the tricky thing about this work is that there is a great deal of meaning floating around in it.

The video images are an imaginative reconstruction of Graham’s grandfather’s New Zealand village, Horahora, flooded in the creation of a hydroelectric power station early last century. There is an extensive display of educational support material in the old schoolhouse beside the barn, including contemporary photographs, text, and archival footage. Even the exhibition catalogue contains several rather wordy semi-academic essays on the genesis of the work; its Tasmanian and global relevance in a time of climate change and rising seas; and a significant number of cultural references which enlighten various elements of the work (including the seemingly incongruous footage of flames).

This interpretive information is presented as incidental rather than integral; unless someone happens to tell you about it, you might not even realise the schoolhouse exhibit is there. The support material layers an experience of the work with immeasurable symbolic and literal “meaning”, but it also detracts from a purely sensual or aesthetic appreciation of the work. And personally, it spun me into an art-istential crisis.

How was I, a viewer, supposed to engage with this work? Was it enough to lie there and take pleasure in the gorgeous underwater cinematography and very listenable music/soundscape, and the rather luxuriously indulgent joy of consuming festival art from a cushy mattress? Or was I doing a disservice to the artists by ignoring the work’s larger context? What were the artists’ intentions, anyway (and are we allowed to care)? If the historical information was vital to the experience of the work, then wasn’t the work failing due to its inability to convey this history without the aid of complementary information? Shouldn’t art – any art – stand alone, independent of commentary from its creators, independent of the extra stimulation provided by ‘facts’? Is that absurdly idealistic or narrow-minded?

Without the support material, do we walk away from this work with a deep understanding of the history of the lost town of Horahora? No. Does this matter? I’m not sure. Should we support works like this, for their inherent aesthetic beauty; for their important personal and cultural memory-work; and for their capacity to stimulate discussion about the form, mode, and purpose of art? Yes. Absolutely yes.

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg is a Hobart-based performer and writer.

Reviewer:Gai Anderson

At the historic Rosny Barn, the stone room is dark; we lie on the floor and look up at five circular vessels, huge black-patterned discs hovering above us like alien eyes. They are Waikuia, Maori treasure boxes, vestibules of memory, magically filling with changing images before us.

Rushing, flowing, streaming, wild…leaping, one to the other, flickers of light become flickers of red, faster, thrashing, faster.

Stories filter unconscious, drowning, spirits of the dead, sighing female voices bubble to wailing ancient lament, ambient drone building to howling crone, strong male voices in echoing haka rise to climax.

Aniwaniwa is based upon historical events, at a place in New Zealand which was flooded twice for a power station. The first drowned Maori sacred sites; and the second, the village of Horahora (which housed the power station) was abandoned to the water.
But it is still there.

Calm now, breathing, washing over, under, reeds and water… calm.

Dark, bubbles, breathe, his story appears and hers, swimming through sighing voices, layering a man with a shovel, a swelling traditional song, trying to light a match, ethereal children in old-fashioned clothes look us straight in the eye, a woman seems to be hanging clothes on a line.

Is that a wooden carved bed or the prow of some long, long lost ship?

Aniwaniwa is the first collaboration between Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena both of Maori descent, their work deals with identity and culture. Brett is primarily a sculptor; his grandparents lived and worked in Horahora. Rachael is a video artist with an interest in culture and its fluidity; she is adept at underwater photography and here uses flooding and immersion as a metaphor for cultural loss.

Gai Anderson is a writer and performer based in the Cygnet, Tasmania.

Reviewer:Kylie E Eastley

On entering the Rosny Farm Barn, the attendant informs us that there are mattresses laid out in the exhibition space. The thought of this instantly appeals as it has been a particularly hectic day and a mid-afternoon lie down is just what’s needed.

The room is dark, with light from tiny windows in the stone building providing limited illumination. And so we rest next to strangers looking up at the huge black carved wakahuia, a vessel containing precious things that house the projections. There are five suspended in a row from the ceiling, each alien-like pod containing its own individual film on a 15-minute loop. I am taken through tranquility to uncertainty, while images of languid water are replaced by spinning, crackling fire.

Settling into this experience, our bodies are engulfed by music, sound and chanting.
Vibrations resonate from head to toe while above we see images sweep in and out of view. At first the images are difficult to make out; rushing water, power poles, grasses, but all underwater. And as we further enter this submerged world figures appear swimming among the grasses and clothes-lines.

In ghostly underwater graves, we see people taking in the washing and children playing. Framed within the etched black pods the figures are reminiscent of old hand-coloured portrait photographs set within concave glass. Images are trapped like the scattered graves of small towns throughout New Zealand and Tasmania.

What we are experiencing is Aniwaniwa, a collaborative installation by New Zealand sculpture, Brett Graham and video/performing artist, Rachael Rakena. Inspired by the decommissioned power station and flooding of New Zealand town, Horahora, this work plays on the idea that through losing these towns physically, we lose history, story, culture and identity.

This work will resonate with Tasmanians, especially those who witnessed the demise of bustling small towns such as Poatina and Waddamana to make way for the Strath Gordon Power Station and the flooding of Lake Pedder. Many communities still feel the impact on employment, industry and sense of community.

This is a reflective installation that encompasses the audience. Looking up and across at these 5 vessels we are drawn into this submersed world. The venue for the installation is perfectly suited to the content, and the additional educational interpretation of the installation housed in the Schoolhouse Gallery adjacent to the Barn provides further background. This material includes film, historical photographs, including photographs of Brett Graham’s father at the Horahora school, and documentation of the work’s inclusion in the 2007 Venice Biennale.

This is the Australian Premiere of Aniwaniwa, presented by Ten Days on the Island, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery and Clarence City Council. It can be viewed until 13 April from 9am-5pm daily.

By Kylie E Eastley a freelance arts consultant based in Hobart, Tasmania.

Reviewer:Mark Cutler

Ani-what-iwa?
“Delivery for Aniwaniwa!”
“What is it?”
“Let me check … it says here it’s a … Philistine.”
“We didn’t order one of those … and they certainly don’t belong here at the Rosny Barn.”
“Look, I just make the deliveries. Apparently it has to make comment on the art installation, so just sign for it please and I can get back to delivering the hype for the 10 Days Festival”.

I’m lying down on a very comfortable mattress in a 200-year-old sandstone barn on Hobart’s eastern shore in semi-darkness. Above me are five enormous monster truck tyre look-alikes, each one acting as host for swirling images of space? Power generator wheels? And people underwater, going about routine-like activity amid floating fronds and palm leaves. The music composed for this son et lumiere rises and falls … one moment ethereal, next moment an accompaniment to a chorale of feminine wailing and lamentation. This is Aniwaniwa.

Conceived by Dr Brett Graham and Rachel Rakena, Aniwaniwa is their artistic response to the flooding in 1911 of the New Zealand village of Horahora and the creation of the artificial Lake Karapiro for hydro-power generation. To that end there are great parallels between this piece and Tasmania’s own culpable history of hydro flooding … the loss of Lake Peddar can still make this grown man cry! The work was presented at the Venice Biennale in 2007. So on many levels it is a valuable addition to the visual arts program for 10 Days on the Island.

But did Aniwaniwa move me … no! Do I think it is worthwhile … yes, but only after reading the accompanying booklet explaining the origins … OK, so that still counts as part of the art, but not the actual art experience. Should you see it … absolutely! It’s free and it’s very relaxing and it’s likely you will get more out of it than me … after all I am the Philistine.

(The views are those expressed only by Philistine Mark … Artistic Mark wishes to distance himself from these comments but is finding it hard because Philistine Mark keeps taking me to the football and Artistic Mark feels obligated to him!)

Mark Cutler is a Hobart based writer/performer.