Two large sculptural installations by Shona Rapira-Davies recently featured at the Len Lye Centre at New Plymouth's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Over 12 months, linked thematically, they shared time and space for a few weeks. During this brief period, I visited the gallery.
The first installation, Ko te Kihikihi, was originally part of the successful group show Swallowing Geography, with the late Matt Pine, Kate Newby and Ana Iti. Sensitively curated by Megan Tāmati-Quennell, this exhibition considered human relationships with land and space—how settler communities absorb and exploit the landscape, consume its narratives of indigenous culture and location, and attempt to uplift and establish themselves by redefining and manipulating those ‘traumatic histories [which] speak of environmental and cultural exploitation; of rupture, violence, displacement, alienation’.1
Within the tribal domain, on the slopes of the maunga, Taranaki, and along the coast of Tai Hauāuru, such narratives of
