02 January 2011

A New Year

We’re at the start of another decade. I wish all of you that it will be a wonderful one, filled with good health, confidence, loyal friends, lots of creativity, success and prosperity. In short: May it be all you ever wanted! 



As we sometimes do, on New Year’s Eve I looked back on the year that was leaving us. 2010 began with my packing up the lace panels that I had been making for Third Space, my final MA exhibition at the Mission House on Rarotonga. As I was sewing them, I had hung each new element in the passage way across our house for a trial. Once they were taken down, the house had looked so empty. I had felt somewhat nostalgic. Sewing these long lace hangings had been a constant discovery for me over the preceding months. The emptiness added to the fear of the other empty space that I was soon going to have to fill.

Would I even have enough pieces to fill that space? Were the elements long enough? Would I be able to find the right balance to create a successful spatial composition? Would the lighting be adequate? How would the examiners receive the work? What would the visitors think? All these questions accompanied the beginning of a new year that would become the most amazing year of my life.


Now I live the beginning of another year. It amazes me that it starts again with packing up tapa and lace panels that I have been making for an installation. The same questions cross my mind. However this time I am more confident and even more excited. The Third Space has developed a life of its own. Third Space II at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney will be accompanied by sound. My Hawaiian friend Rudy who lives on Rarotonga has composed amazing tunes on my request. I am very excited about this prospect. Again, I have no idea what the finished installation will look like, whether I will be able to fill the allocated space. This time, I don’t even know what the room will look like. I have all these plans of what to do with these individual elements and can’t wait for the next 6 months to pass quickly. Only in early July can I travel to Sydney and start creating this space that at the moment only exists as a vague idea inside my head.


In a week’s time, the cardboard box with the rolled up panels will go on its journey. Australian Quarantine will have to find its contents suitable for entry into the country, the last hurdle yet to take. It amazes me that these few small rolls have been my focus for almost an entire year. 

And yet, I still have so many ideas for the future around this project that it only feels like another stage in the life of an unknown organism; an organism that I am exploring through the making of its elements; through its exposure in different environments, to different viewers; and through the people I meet and the knowledge I gather as a result. Let Stage II begin! 

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