Albert L. Refiti, with exhibition design by Hannah Manning-Scott
Objectspace, Auckland
3 December 2022 – 26 February 2023
Mike Austin, known for his humility, would shrink from the title ‘Godfather of Pacific Architecture’, even if I use it in moderate jest. But there is truth in the ruse. Parsing the canon of Pacific architecture means, inevitably, encountering the work of Mike Austin. This is impressive; the region is defined by the watery body that flows over one third of the planet.
Austin is a practising architect and Or maybe it wasn’t. When I peer closely and try to listen to these images, it is salty water that I hear. One ought to see this exhibition. The catalogue includes built realms that are no longer in existence. For this viewer, an image showing power lines stretching over silvery water and mangroves to the island of Bau in Fiji, with bure in the distance, was especially poignant. Others will find different images, if not this one, will speak to them in the same way, I am sure. It was taken in 1988 and the Fiji coup had just occurred; 1989 would see the Berlin Wall come down. The world was opening to free markets and Austin was noting everything he could about the architecture of the Pacific. It is stilling to participate in this longer view as an audience and, as the exhibition seems to invite, to understand oneself as similarly agentic in telling the story of Pacific architecture.
