Button Non-uments

These works are primarily based on time and memory, as well as movement through time and memory. It’s important to consider the foundations upon which the buttons are held as an important key. Driftwood is a strong metaphor, that idea that wood drifts is a really important aspect of the work but also that driftwood appears to be in a sort of purgatory or stasis, a liminal space, it's dead but not resting, it's moving and yet not attached to life, not growing. The buttons are also focusing on this idea of loss and movement across time as well.  We lose buttons, we rely on buttons, they are nostalgic objects. It's a play on that nostalgia but also these objects as a whole form a kind of solastalgia, where they remain the same and the world around them changes. The colours are chosen arbitrarily yet they begin to speak of different attitudes, they sort of emerge within the work. I'm responding aesthetically and physically and visually to the construction of the work and where the buttons should go and I wanted them to be amorphous forms and to not be like the Australian artist Louise Weaver who creates animal forms, I wanted these sculptures to be memorials that could be moved, that could be changed, that hold significance and then be given back or could it be adjusted. These are non-uments, monuments that are recalling small things and small events. This works also set alongside other artworks, in conversation with them. They are drawn to them and whisper to them but they're also whole in themselves and can operate in solitude. Could they be a kind of non-religious votive? They hold a secret in a way that all good memorials do but yet are uninscribed like most. The eyes of the buttons always open like that of the tekoteko or portrait painting, following you around the room.

Friend, 2022, button on found wood.

From Tourist To Pilgrim, Tim Melville Gallery, 2-27 August 2016

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

                                    - Alan Watts

This exhibition contemplates the ideas of time, navigation and the self, in relation to the endless multitudes on earth that crave connection.

The works in the show address the way the artist is attempting to depart from being a tourist and positioning himself towards the way of the pilgrim. Through his use of poetry, silence and stillness the artist highlights the presence and absence of objects, people and other living things in the physical world.

The paintings are based on drawings and memories of passing through spaces as they pass through you, both, changing as a result. The colour and brushwork is a representation of the energy that is contained within everything. The reciprocal nature of listening during the many sojourns that the artist often undertakes has produced works from the privileged position of the manuhiri (guest), and the special responsibility that that entails. The paintings and photographs as well as the brief texts, made out of wood, paper and metal reference a reverence for our natural and built environment as well as the way we communicate with each other.

The show invites the viewer to join the artist, if only for a moment, to pause and reflect, with appreciation, on a world that yearns to be witnessed.