Multi media artist Hemi MacGregor, is a highly respected artist and teacher at Massey University, he works across sculpture, painting, installation, video and public art.
His masterclass delved deep into finding your place. Your place to stand, your position, not in opposition but knowing where you stand and what defines you.
He allowed us all a window into his creative process, both theoretically and his process and the meaningfulness of collaboration.
“E kore au e ngaro, he kakano I ruia mai I rangiatea”
Atea means the open space between. The space between us. The ocean is considered an atea, a space between you and them .Knowledge between this realm and the intangible. The knowledge beyond in the darkness. Arrangements of knowledge. Korero, is the Spiritual surface of us shared. Rangi is sky father and also the mind.
“MY PRACTICE AS A MAORI ARTIST IS A REFLECTION OF MY CULTURAL BELIEFS. MY ARTWORK BECOMES A CONDUIT BETWEEN TE AO MARAMA, OUR PRESENT REALITY AND THE SPIRITUAL REALM OF THE ATUA. I PURPOSEFULLY RE-PRESENT EVERYDAY OBJECTS AS ARTWORKS TO CONVEY CULTURALLY SPECIFIC NARRATIVES. THE INTENTION OF MY PRACTICE IS FOR MāORI TO MAINTAIN A RELATIONSHIP TO THE PAST WHILE ALSO PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE."
Quote tupuna
You have to maintain it or it will die if you don’t follow your own path you will be a slave to someone else’s path. In maoridom we live in the world of light, when you’re an artist you turn your world on the world of light and to find the origin of the source of your energy. The color red, is the symbol of this. Put a seed into the ground and the darkness and the embrace of the “te kore” the known potential for creative energy.
While you are finding out who you are as an artist, what is your position, who are you. Creatively you are in the darkness, you make yourself vulnerable. Art has to come from somewhere meaningful within you. Nurture it or it will wither and die.
Dark and light symbolic.
Stitch the above to below
The dark to the light
Tension of being apart but together. The pole that holds the marae and pushes them apart. Rangi and pupa to anuku
Find your community the work you love and respond too. You are part of the threads from your past not alone, a continuation of the creative journey.
Research was around the stars and cosmology to inform the design of the Marae.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNiiQabSERE&t=3s
The structure that informs the practice. The scaffolding between the darkness and light, idea intangibility and the physical theoretical to outcome. Methodology is your process. How to get from the idea to the manifestation.
https://www.artzone.co.nz/post/art-waters-the-family-tree
This work speaks about the invasive violent raids against Maori people by the military. The installation was a reaction to the unlawful and violent Urewera police raids of 2007, which affected communities that included members of Te Ratana’s family. She says the collaboration was about “needing to have a collective voice through our visual culture that supported the people who were immediately and most affected at the time,” but also took on a “wider cultural responsibility in providing a place for discourse outside of the media and the mainstream.”
Saffronn Te Ratana, Ngatai Taepa, Hemi Macgregor “Ka Kata Te Po” cardboard, fiberglass, 2013. Courtesy of the artists and Auckland Art Gallery. Photographed by Jennifer French AAG 2013.
The black figure suspended in the lightning bolts of energy, a bulls head, is the colonizer. Symbolically using the bull as a metaphor, it will reach and mow everything in its path, representing the devastation of that force. A lament for the loss of culture, using mint green, lament le mint :) Hemi walked through the process of sculpting and mold making, utilising a mannequin, which was painted and molded in silicone, cast by a third party from Fibre glass, then finished by automotive painters. The sculpture symbolizes the relationship between the government figure and the energy and power of the people a tua.
“It’s important to learn how to speak from your heart, after twenty
years of being an artist I am only becoming comfortable with this
responsibility, I say this now to you because the world needs artist to
talk from their hearts.”
Like the song of the tui it is calling the return of the light and warmth. Find your calling.
“Am I a sculptor or am I a painter?. I’m an artist and do what I want. A dichotomy drew it together. The two feed one another.”
Agent Provocateur #4, 2012, aluminum, wood, paint
