Abundance - Wearable Art
The original inhabitants of Aotearoa were headstrong and hardy people. The land of the long white cloud, with its regular nourishing rain, ensures all that lays beneath it is bountiful in colour, quirkiness, simplicity and life giving sustenance. From the many landmarks telling ageless stories, to the diverse fauna and elegant flora, New Zealand is a country that appears to have it all. But does it? Like many nations taking their abundance for granted, so to is Aotearoa finding their iconic species and natural resources facing man made threats of extinction. This gown is created in a naïve style using the ancient original photographic art of cyanotype and rough edge hand sewing to echo the simple tools and techniques that would have been available to the original inhabitants.
Over 100 hours went into making this vibrant gown and headpiece. Meticulously hand beaded and hand sewn. A labour of love.
Over 100 hours went into making this vibrant gown and headpiece. Meticulously hand beaded and hand sewn. A labour of love.
Finalist - Remagine 2021 - Hornsby Shire Council, NSW
I wrote a story to go with this gown. I had a sick child by my side and suddenly felt inspired. In half an hour I typed up a whirlwind. You can read it below:
Slowly Fading, Abundance
The animals tip toed and fluttered around in awe. Those of the finned variety floated with gaping mouths, the others were still, just feeling the peace. Could it be real? Their home? As the tall Kauri bowed down to welcome them, and the stands of fragrant Manuka waved gaily at them, the animals knew it was true. They’d been gifted paradise. A place with no predators. A place where everyone could be who they were destined to be without fear of persecution. Where the trees could grow tall, the bushes thick, and the flowers blossom in untouched abandonment. Utopia.
The ancestors arrived in boats. They had travelled many moons over rough seas from lands untold, with no flora or fauna to rival what they saw. The bountiful nature and pleasantly tame wildlife offered companionship, and abundance. Mostly sticking to the true order of things, the ancestors only took what they needed to shelter from the frequent rains, to satisfy the rumblings of their stomachs, and to keep their well-honed warriors bodies covered to a point of modesty. They knew that to live in perpetuity, they had to live in harmony with the gifts around them. They couldn’t believe their luck to have arrived in a place of such prosperity.
The elder stood in front of the whare and spoke woefully to her fanau. “Do you not see what we are doing here? The white man came and ruled our spaces. They disdained our practices. They made us behave like them against our wishes, they kept forcefully pushing us until now we do what we can to be like them. As we drink these bubbling brews, and eat these wrapped items that cannot even be called food, we have lost our way. With each successive generation we are becoming more like them. Lazy, overweight, lacking knowledge of the ancient ways, bullying others into doing our way, which now is their way. Where has our wisdom gone? Our ways of creating baskets, hunting and fishing for only what we need, for helping our own, for our ceremony and tradition, for living at peace with the natural world, for keeping ourselves fit and healthy by our daily interaction with mother nature’s bounty?”. She implored to deaf ears. Many had already tuned away from the presumed rantings of a no longer important medicine woman to their ‘smart’ phones, chocolate bars, and grumblings at the state of their lives. The government promised to look after them. Those at the very top now gave them their money. Why should they, nay, why would they expend their energy as the crone suggested when the shops now gave them everything they believed they needed. No matter that community no longer felt like a reality, they had their digital world to occupy their minds now.
The girl was young and not yet seen as a potential mate. No good at rugby she was left alone by all the males. No fun for playing games, to young to be seen as a potential cohabitor. The married women knew her to be two years away still from women’s duties. And so she was left alone. Alone she was left, alone she did not feel. She walked among the majestic trees and bushes, touching and feeling them, hearing their stories as she went. Sitting quietly the animals came and rested by her. Basking in the peaceful non-threatening presence she gifted. As she sat she tuned into their needs, their wants, their utter hurts and desperation. They were fading. Fading from the abundance her distant ancestors had known. They needed her help. Matching the speech from her grand elder to the calls of appeal she heard from the flora and fauna she sat with her intuition. Slowly she was guided to the flax bush. To harvest minimally, to strip, and pulp, and dry, and weave to create a rough hewn linen type material. Her teachers at the local school provided her with the powders to create the photographic solution she needed. She spent hours painstakingly cutting recycled paper with her scissors and blade tip, getting each scale, each feather, each leaf perfectly in place, perfectly portioned, perfectly realistic. As she cut she prayed. She sent out prayers to her people to bring awareness back to the old ways, she prayed to the corporations and businesses stripping the land of the fish for pleasurable eating, cutting down trees for pleasurable carpentry, felling the habitats of the birds and tuataras for secondary housing, when one should be more than enough for a single family, she prayed they would stop. At least slow down the manic destruction. She prayed for the world to realise they were hurting the world beyond repair. Hundreds of hours of cutting, hundreds of hours of meditation and sending out deeply rooted hope for humanities future. The elder stroked the girl’s hair as she worked. As in a fever. Slowly her community gathered around her, intrigued by her work. What was the end result? What was all this needless cutting working towards? Slowly the animals, birds, fish, trees and bushes began to reveal themselves. The Mussels who preach stillness, the Kauri who caution quiet strength, the Snapper who teach self-awareness, the Kiwi who lives by quiet introspection. Combining her cut-out creatures and flora, her ancient photographic solutions and hand made flax material, she used the uplifting and rejuvenating strength of the sun to implement the cyanotype process, the original way of creating photos from many, many years ago, to bring images to her fabric panels. The richness of the blue cyanotype made the onlookers think of the depth of the sea, the height of the sky, and the earth on which they all lived. But still, the girl continued. As her mother made her precious paua fritters to sustain her, she sewed, by all the daylight hours she sewed for days at a time.
She slept. The girl slept for three days without interruption as her community tip-toed around her creation. They wept, they keened, they offered up prayers of gratitude and sorrow to their ancestors. They had been led away from the ways which had sustained their people for so long. The girls naively sewn gown reminded them of the east Asian islands their original people had sailed out from, so many moons ago the stories had started to fade. Their people who had sacrificed everything and found ways for them to prosper in this new land, with abundant food and shelter. They had been led astray from this perfect harmony by a people who had never had affinity for the gifts of the earth. A people who were jealous and couldn’t live that way, so had declared that none would. To the solemn form of the girl, their new elder, their gift from the spirits, this sleeping deity among them, they avowed to change their ways. To spread this awakening to the other tribes and groups and to encourage the return to the ways of Mother Earth. To begin this dissemination, they entered her work into an exhibition of ‘Fast food, fast fashion, fast running out of natural resources’ where her gown was named a finalist. And all those who saw the work felt a shift in their psyche, a shift in their desire to create a closer connection to nature, a shift towards starting the conversations that would slowly turn our world back into a harmonious way of living between natural resources, man, flora and fauna, and abundance for all.
The ancestors arrived in boats. They had travelled many moons over rough seas from lands untold, with no flora or fauna to rival what they saw. The bountiful nature and pleasantly tame wildlife offered companionship, and abundance. Mostly sticking to the true order of things, the ancestors only took what they needed to shelter from the frequent rains, to satisfy the rumblings of their stomachs, and to keep their well-honed warriors bodies covered to a point of modesty. They knew that to live in perpetuity, they had to live in harmony with the gifts around them. They couldn’t believe their luck to have arrived in a place of such prosperity.
The elder stood in front of the whare and spoke woefully to her fanau. “Do you not see what we are doing here? The white man came and ruled our spaces. They disdained our practices. They made us behave like them against our wishes, they kept forcefully pushing us until now we do what we can to be like them. As we drink these bubbling brews, and eat these wrapped items that cannot even be called food, we have lost our way. With each successive generation we are becoming more like them. Lazy, overweight, lacking knowledge of the ancient ways, bullying others into doing our way, which now is their way. Where has our wisdom gone? Our ways of creating baskets, hunting and fishing for only what we need, for helping our own, for our ceremony and tradition, for living at peace with the natural world, for keeping ourselves fit and healthy by our daily interaction with mother nature’s bounty?”. She implored to deaf ears. Many had already tuned away from the presumed rantings of a no longer important medicine woman to their ‘smart’ phones, chocolate bars, and grumblings at the state of their lives. The government promised to look after them. Those at the very top now gave them their money. Why should they, nay, why would they expend their energy as the crone suggested when the shops now gave them everything they believed they needed. No matter that community no longer felt like a reality, they had their digital world to occupy their minds now.
The girl was young and not yet seen as a potential mate. No good at rugby she was left alone by all the males. No fun for playing games, to young to be seen as a potential cohabitor. The married women knew her to be two years away still from women’s duties. And so she was left alone. Alone she was left, alone she did not feel. She walked among the majestic trees and bushes, touching and feeling them, hearing their stories as she went. Sitting quietly the animals came and rested by her. Basking in the peaceful non-threatening presence she gifted. As she sat she tuned into their needs, their wants, their utter hurts and desperation. They were fading. Fading from the abundance her distant ancestors had known. They needed her help. Matching the speech from her grand elder to the calls of appeal she heard from the flora and fauna she sat with her intuition. Slowly she was guided to the flax bush. To harvest minimally, to strip, and pulp, and dry, and weave to create a rough hewn linen type material. Her teachers at the local school provided her with the powders to create the photographic solution she needed. She spent hours painstakingly cutting recycled paper with her scissors and blade tip, getting each scale, each feather, each leaf perfectly in place, perfectly portioned, perfectly realistic. As she cut she prayed. She sent out prayers to her people to bring awareness back to the old ways, she prayed to the corporations and businesses stripping the land of the fish for pleasurable eating, cutting down trees for pleasurable carpentry, felling the habitats of the birds and tuataras for secondary housing, when one should be more than enough for a single family, she prayed they would stop. At least slow down the manic destruction. She prayed for the world to realise they were hurting the world beyond repair. Hundreds of hours of cutting, hundreds of hours of meditation and sending out deeply rooted hope for humanities future. The elder stroked the girl’s hair as she worked. As in a fever. Slowly her community gathered around her, intrigued by her work. What was the end result? What was all this needless cutting working towards? Slowly the animals, birds, fish, trees and bushes began to reveal themselves. The Mussels who preach stillness, the Kauri who caution quiet strength, the Snapper who teach self-awareness, the Kiwi who lives by quiet introspection. Combining her cut-out creatures and flora, her ancient photographic solutions and hand made flax material, she used the uplifting and rejuvenating strength of the sun to implement the cyanotype process, the original way of creating photos from many, many years ago, to bring images to her fabric panels. The richness of the blue cyanotype made the onlookers think of the depth of the sea, the height of the sky, and the earth on which they all lived. But still, the girl continued. As her mother made her precious paua fritters to sustain her, she sewed, by all the daylight hours she sewed for days at a time.
She slept. The girl slept for three days without interruption as her community tip-toed around her creation. They wept, they keened, they offered up prayers of gratitude and sorrow to their ancestors. They had been led away from the ways which had sustained their people for so long. The girls naively sewn gown reminded them of the east Asian islands their original people had sailed out from, so many moons ago the stories had started to fade. Their people who had sacrificed everything and found ways for them to prosper in this new land, with abundant food and shelter. They had been led astray from this perfect harmony by a people who had never had affinity for the gifts of the earth. A people who were jealous and couldn’t live that way, so had declared that none would. To the solemn form of the girl, their new elder, their gift from the spirits, this sleeping deity among them, they avowed to change their ways. To spread this awakening to the other tribes and groups and to encourage the return to the ways of Mother Earth. To begin this dissemination, they entered her work into an exhibition of ‘Fast food, fast fashion, fast running out of natural resources’ where her gown was named a finalist. And all those who saw the work felt a shift in their psyche, a shift in their desire to create a closer connection to nature, a shift towards starting the conversations that would slowly turn our world back into a harmonious way of living between natural resources, man, flora and fauna, and abundance for all.