June 2023
Submerging Psychedelia: She Could Lie on Her Back and Sink
By Misong Kim | Auckland, 15 June 2023
A new group exhibition at the University of Auckland’s contemporary art centre Gus Fisher Gallery unravels the trope of the witch as a guiding figure through which dissidence is pinned.
Conceived by the gallery’s director Lisa Beauchamp, She could lie on her back and sink (3 June–26 August 2023) features the work of Tai Shani, Ann Shelton, Jayne Parker, and Louie Zalk-Neale (with collaborators Adam Ben-Dror, Neke Moa, and Dr Tāwhanga Nopera), who each look at alternative forms of knowledge, in particular witchcraft, in a suite of installations and video works.
Louie Zalk-Neale (with Adam Ben-Dror, Neke Moa, and Dr Tāwhanga Nopera), Beyond your tadpole stage // Your spinal cord dissolves (2023). Plastic barrel, PETG plastic, seawater, tī kōuka fibre (Cordyline australis, cabbage tree), harakeke (Phormium tenax, New Zealand flax), pungapunga (pumice), pounamu (jade and serpentine), ōnewa (graywacke), kōkawa (andesite), tokauku (shale), takawai (quartz), washing machine pump, refrigerator air compressor, motion sensor, electronics. Exhibition view: Group exhibition, She could lie on her back and sink, Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (3 June–26 August 2023).
Louie Zalk-Neale (with Adam Ben-Dror, Neke Moa, and Dr Tāwhanga Nopera), Beyond your tadpole stage // Your spinal cord dissolves (2023). Plastic barrel, PETG plastic, seawater, tī kōuka fibre (Cordyline australis, cabbage tree), harakeke (Phormium tenax, New Zealand flax), pungapunga (pumice), pounamu (jade and serpentine), ōnewa (graywacke), kōkawa (andesite), tokauku (shale), takawai (quartz), washing machine pump, refrigerator air compressor, motion sensor, electronics. Exhibition view: Group exhibition, She could lie on her back and sink, Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (3 June–26 August 2023). Courtesy Gus Fisher Gallery. Photo: Sam Hartnett.
The artists zoom in on instances in history and culture where nature and women’s knowledge of nature is perceived as a threat to an established order—whether patriarchal, religious, or colonial.
The exhibition’s title is drawn from ‘The Three Fates’ (2022), a short story by New Zealand novelist Pip Adam commissioned by New Zealand photographer Ann Shelton to inform her series ‘i am an old phenomenon’ (2022–ongoing)….
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