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E kare, you're so colonised!

Gina Matchitt

Tuesday 30 January - 25 February

“Aunty doesn’t have hot water at home but she has a laptop!” Gina Matchitt muses when discussing her Aunty and Mother both of whom are in their 70’s and presently learning all about how to use a computer. Yes every week they attend a computer class and enthusiastically disappear into cyber space in an attempt to catch-up (or keep-up) with their whanau and mokopuna (grandchildren) mastering the computer. The very idea conjures-up a meeting old and new, a type of contrasting of opposites. I agree it is not the most flattering of contrasts (nor is it fair) but it does make one reconsider technology being merely ‘the domain of the youth’. Surely it’s just another mode of communicating with one another? This sets-up a type of premise that provides an entry point into Gina Matchitt’s latest body of work in E kare, you’re so colonized!

Gina Matchitt (Te Whakatohea, Te Arawa) explores modes of communication, pondering ‘the old and the new’. Incorporating tukutuku patterning (cross-stitch weaving) found within the wharenui (meeting house), a form of communication of another time and another era, the artist offers a contemporary commentary on the very idea of communication. Matchitt recycles black and white computer keys as her contemporary means of exchange. Here the artist amalgams both customary and contemporary modes to send her messages via ‘tukutuku express’. Granted not the fastest form of communication, well not next to your home or work computer whereby e-mails flick in and out at phenomenal rates, but nonetheless they share a common purpose.

Five sets of long paired tukutuku panels are installed into the gallery space like a contemporary cyber-wharenui. The panels are presented in bold contrasting patterns with black and white (grey really) setting the scene. Upon closer inspection, we find the tukutuku patterns kaokao and patikitiki encrusted using computer keys that sit at differing depth. They provide a surprising textural element to the works that suggest a sense of movement and texture.

Complementing these patterns – if you read the keys right – messages sit hidden in Matchitt’s panels whereby whakatauki (Maori proverbs) offer lessons and communicate stories alluding to how customary Maori knowledge was distributed and exchanged. With this combining of the visual language and the written the artist pivots on the literal and the esoteric modes by which Maori now communicate. Rather than making comment regarding the validity of one over the other, Matchitt’s panels acknowledge the importance of both - a statement that comes full circle in Mum and Aunty learning to use this new tool to communicate with.

E kare, you’re so colonized! is a statement that sort of works in reverse. Matchitt recalls a discussion with a Maori weaver regarding her moko kauwae (womens chin moko). “I remember she asked me, why don’t you get one Gina? and I replied with I think I need to know what it means first before I get anything like that done, to which she replied, E kare, you’re so colonized!” Not affronted by the comment but more bemused it has stuck with the artist and now fuels a healthy curiosity to accept that Maori knowledge (whether made known to you or not) is still Maori knowledge. Matchitt has adopted this philosophy to challenge her own boundaries about what is acceptable or not within the sphere of communicating her Maori concepts to a wider audience.

E kare, you’re so colonized! extends upon the artists’ own unique visual vocabulary that interweaves a long held interest in the differing forms of mahi raranga (weaving) within her own jewellery installation oeuvre. Matchitt continues to bring out the ‘inner weaver’ extending a conversation with mahi raranga that has moved in and out of her work for many years now. One might suggest it has always been part of her sensibility becoming more present in the shows Geyserland Hotel (2004) and Where Everyone Gets a Bargain (2005). Indeed, more and more overtly, and perhaps even more confidently, Matchitt is examining customary Maori imagery and knowledge whilst wittingly directing it into new territory that places it slightly askew to its former surrounds. Here the artist achieves new readings and some quirky rendering of customary knowledge with new stories to tell. So while Aunty may not have hot water she can always Google a plummer to come sort it out.

Nigel Borell 2007

Matapihi I & II

Patikitiki I & II

Roimata Toroa I & II

Deatail of Kaokao II