Recent workings
I have recently been working on a series of bronze pieces, exploring the redemption of humankind by the natural world in our journey after dying.
The works have a dreamlike quality as souls find themselves journeying by boat into the underworld, under the guidance and stewardship of spirit creatures.
I began these works with small maquettes and the journey ‘world’ developed through responses to them. As a New Zealand artist I’m also alluding to aspects of Maori understandings of the spirit after-life: the waka that carries the dead to the underworld with offerings, pekapeka (nocturnal / underworld) and piwakawaka (diurnal / new world) as guides. My family’s Celtic background influenced my thinking about ‘thin spaces’, the almost transparent boundary between the visible and invisible. This suggests that our connection to the creature spirit dimension is not that far away and that we have always been part of it. My previous works have explored our separation from nature, as urban dwellers. By contrast, these current works are about reconnection.
