Dealing with issues facing the land of Aotearoa today I build a fascination toward histories of the land, gaining historical knowledge helps with, not only plant species, but also in understanding who had lived and voyaged to Aotearoa previously. In effects of what might be happening to these spaces currently, through effects of colonialism such as land loss and housing, I attempt to highlight the issues formed by colonialism through a use of materials and landscape painting.
In my work I am exploring how landscapes previously occupied by Māori contrast with the post-colonial effects of land ownership. Due to effects of the Anthropocene, native plant ecosystems are pressured by an ongoing expansion of human infrastructure. Using salvaged building materials as a surface for painting on, my work references the human impact on the environment through increasing housing development.
Photography and drawings document these environments as they are. Photographs and drawings hold onto what these spaces look like before they can be altered, but they could also be seen to capture a certain time the forest is viewed. Ever changing and growing, I am only capturing the space when I visit. The ecosystem, although seemingly the same as previously visited has changed drastically, death has been here but life has too, with both flora and fauna, memories and people.
Native forest which resides along the outskirts of developing rural suburbs will possibly be destroyed for further housing development. The land here is flourishing with native flora and fauna and although these spaces appear untouched, faint sounds of cars and trucks going by can be heard along with the occasional sounds of construction as new houses get built. Although faint, the sounds almost taunt the land, still preserved for now, but its destruction is edging closer, the inevitability of it all looms over the canopy.
I am researching the progression of housing infrastructure and it’s the impacts on native bush. I am not in firm opposition to housing development, but rather am questioning its selection of locations as this can involve the destruction of native bush of many years’ growth. Some of these spaces may not be directly affected in future, due to their geographical location close to the Waikato River, but they are in threat of being lost as quiet places for native birds.
I have used wood, mainly plywood and MDF boards, to evoke the sense of housing infrastructure. The use of worn and used found boards emphasize the second hand, and suggest that the landscape is also broken, used and damaged, this history within the material is of importance to my work as it holds a narrative in of its self. The salvaged pieces also refer to the produced and processed.
Another issue which impacts on Aotearoa’s landscape is invasive pine logging which covers many hills that I come across regularly. Pine forests aren’t inherently bad as they create passages for bird species and harbor ground species of native plants, but these pines do out compete native pines and other tall trees. Although pine is a fast growing wood itself, its quality comparative to others in use is not of a high standard. Could we grow a native plant species which could do the same job?
Being researched are a number of artists whose work has been useful to my own material and conceptual investigations. These include the New Zealand painter, Kim Pieters. Pieters also uses discarded materials; in particular, MDF which is a building material used in construction and housing. Pieters MDF boards have a used quality to them, left behind are nail holes and torn ridges splitting the panel like drawing marks. Pieters work includes washes of a purple-blue paint which is caught at the bottom of the panel referencing the making processes used, but also possibly exaggerating the weight of the paint.
I have also considered artists from New Zealand history, such as James Cook’s painters and the botanical artists who produced early versions of western landscape painting of Aotearoa as they mapped and tracked through Aotearoas bush. The studies which John Webber and Sydney Parkinson made of Aotearoa encouraged the British to return back to New Zealand, works which have helped me with my own work through breaking up visual information recorded around areas in the Waikato across a painting, in doing so I am not creating an idealistic view of Aotearoa landscape but creating paintings formed by sections of the spaces which I am looking at. These artists mimick time spent within these areas – possible glances into a space or a moment in time is being hinted at as well through a change of brush marks. Some are fast expressive gestures and some slower and detailed.
Recently exploring historical painters such as Toss Woollaston, famous for his expressive depictions of Aotearoa. I look at Woollaston as a recent painter of the New Zealand landscape as his method of painting highlights the materials used – oil or watercolour – and these materials almost become as important as the landscape or objects he is depicting. His work is reminiscent of expressionist painters but at the same time a recognizably Aotearoa landscape through the colours and shapes and other motifs.
Barbara Tuck is a contemporary painter of which I have also begun to research.
Tuck creates paintings which depict a number of landscapes dispersed over a canvas, these are collages of multiple landscapes over a canvas, a distortion.
Collaged imagery depicting these sections creates distorted and dismantled languages that represent the breaking down of natural habitats. Although Tuck is very much a landscape painter the depiction of people sometimes appears and stories are made when these figures are introduced. These narratives almost give a new ‘human touch’ to them, taken out of the conventional ‘landscape painting’ but including humans in a means to include the human, it is rare to find land which hasn’t been seen of visited by people and so including them makes us aware of our influence on the land.
Science and observation is used to help us to understand our world and make new discoveries. Through it, we can learn about flora and fauna, beyond what is presented at first glance. How then, can my own observation of a place through a somewhat scientific method be brought into a studio and art based practice?
Through a basic understanding of environmental science I have begun exploring ways plants use different chlorophyll to create pigmentation and light to help form the energy to maintain colour. To me this process is quite informative and helps me to grasp onto what is being depicted in a way that not only considers the visual appearance of flora, but also the ways in which it lives and grows.
In further consideration of the use of scientific methods in art practice I have looked at New Zealand artist Simon Ingram. Ingram outsources the production of his paintings by use of an apparatus he calls a painting machine. The making of painted geometric marks through a computer is an area which has intrigued myself. This correlation between science and art excites me and is something which I wish to push further within my practice.
Intrigued by ways scientists in Aotearoa survey land, species and ecosystems, I have become interested in the apparatus they use: such as trackers, traps, and markers. These are placed within ecosystems to indicate specific routes and locations through land.
In addition, I have recently discovered a document that shows the specificity of light and colour used on markers that help test visibility of track markers through the forest.
The ways in which scientific methods can be applied to art practice is an area which could become useful in my own investigation of the landscape of Aotearoa. Art creates a narrative which speaks to the emotional and subjective experience. I am interested in the potential for new conversations to develop with the introduction of scientific methods – contrasting the spiritual with the factual.
What can we understand from Aotearoa’s natural ecosystems through both a subjective personal experience and through one of scientific study?
How can science inform art and how can art inform science?
Llenyd Price 