Frontispiece

Koorero Timatanga

Atamaarie e te whaanau:

Good morning, everybody,

For some time now, towards the end of the working week, Sarah will ask me if I will "do" a Breathing Light this coming weekend.

I have resisted, telling her and myself I have nothing to say for now.

However, as the celebrated artist Damien Hirst says:

I think I know why.

In Te Ao Maaori, the Maaori world, Matariki, and winter, the time after it, we withdraw inside, both physically and spiritually, go inwards, and make our inner journey. It is a time for reflection.

And renewal.

Winter is the time of Takarua, the Winter Maid, one of the wives of Ruuaumoko, the atua (god) of Rarohenga, the Underworld. He is the unborn child of Papatuuaanuku, Mother Earth, the Restless One inside her womb, and responsible for earthquakes and volcanic activity. Takarua, like Persephone, spends a part of the year in the World Below with him before returning to the surface as Raumati, the Summer Maid.

For some time now, in following my whakapapa (ancestry) line, I have gone further back, and the further I go, the greater the similarities between the different pathologies. While one is essentially Polynesian mythology and the other is Mediterranean, I wonder if there is a temporal node where the story existed before diverging along different cultural paths. Do all mythologies have a common base point?

Searching for the header image for this kawerongo (newsletter), I allowed my mind to wander through the back catalogue of my picture archive and see what popped up.

This.

Back in 2017, when I was living in Rawene and looking for pictures to make, I would occasionally ride the ferry across to Kohukohu, or Koke, as the locals call it. The kohu (fog) forming at the head of the harbour would often ride the air currents down just before dawn and coat the Bay in a soft blanket of swirling, seething grey. Then the sun would rise and, bit by bit, pick it apart until the sky was clear by around 10 am.

I took the first ferry across around 7 am, looked around Kohukohu and then drove back to wait for the return trip.

Then I saw it.

A fog bow.

The early morning sun had created a beautiful arc of light that cascaded down from right to left onto the boat ramp.

I went to my vehicle to get my camera and rushed back.

As I was framing it, the returning ferry emerged from the kohu (fog), slithering in sideways to glide up onto the ramp, disgorge its cargo of vehicles, and then take us aboard.

It was a perfect moment, one of those moments. Photography seems to have been created for the ability to use our camera to document and place out there beyond ourselves.

My friend, the Canadian photographer Freeman Patterson, maintains that the pictures we make are our subconscious, leading us by 5 to 7 years. It will take that long for the meaning behind our photographs to rise to the surface and make sense, informing us of our life journey and understanding of it.

This picture seemed eminently suitable for this kawerongo.

I suddenly saw a metaphor for crossing the river Styx, except in reverse.

In Greek mythology, it is very much a one-way trip. The dead cross into Hades and stay there. There is no way back.

However, that may not be the case in our world.

Perhaps each of us needs to spend time in Rarotonga as part of the constant cycle of life, death, and rebirth on our human journey.

Perhaps that is the gift of Takarua, the great joy of winter.

Mahi Toi-Making Art

In Search of a Question

It seems to me that to be an artist is to walk a tightrope between boredom and repetition and stay committed to a path, moving forward, focusing and concentrating so you do not end up in a mire of constant reproduction, becoming a type of artistic photocopier.

In other words, we can stay in the safe fenced paddock of what works or wander into the distance across the savannah, looking for a new path, and risk becoming lost in the grasslands.

So, are we herd animals comfortable with being enclosed and therefore safe from predation, surrounded by peers who speak the same language we do and are consequently a comfort, or are we willing to throw it all to the winds and head off into the grasslands where there are no signposts or even paths to follow?

I wonder if discomfort is the father of discovery and if that discomfort will lead us to find new questions to answer and, therefore, a new artistic path to follow, albeit perhaps for a minimal amount of time.

While I spent the winter with Takarua in Rarohenga (and remember, there is no carry-on baggage allowed on Charon's boat), I had to bide my time and wait for a direction to come.

There is a sense that I need to begin to work differently.

And all Art begins with a question. It may be technical, exploring some aspects of the artistic technology we use (painting, sculpture, photography). Ansel Adams set out to create a system for consistent exposure and development and, in doing so, developed the Zone System. He did not invent it, for it was Edward Weston's idea. However, with his comrades in the f64 School, Adams took previsualisation to a new level. He wanted to stand out in the field with his equipment and confidently predict the finished print before pressing the shutter. Little wonder, then, that he is regarded as a master of black and white photography. His question was simple:

And so he did, exploring every aspect of his process, from lens to print, until he had mastered it.

When you can, look online at Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite. It is a masterpiece that people try to emulate every year (even using similar equipment) and that no one has ever done. Imagine him trudging up the Yosemite mountains with over 40 kg of camera equipment and only four exposures in his camera bag. Imagine having the confidence to know that the extraordinary scene before you would look a particular way before you ever tripped the shutter.

Artists' questions often arise from playing or mistakes, which open the door to possible lines of enquiry and potential new works.

I remember the morning I made the picture at the head of this image. I walked out the door of my gallery and across the road to the edge of the river to make exposures of the moon rising through the mist. Unknown to me, I had set the camera on multiple exposures, and as I pressed the shutter, I felt something did not sound right. It took a few exposures before I realised something was untoward. I could not figure it out until I checked out what shutter setting I was on. Then the penny dropped—by then, the moment had long gone, wandering off down the harbour and sniggering to itself about the klutz standing on the edge of the Hokianga harbour fiddling with his camera.

I felt the moment's derision.

However, I decided to download whatever I had, check it out, and see if anything was there.

Much to my surprise, there was something there, if different.

The three suns.

Interesting.

I put it to one side.

Until yesterday.

I sense a question whispering from the grasslands, reflected in a rearview mirror from seven years ago.

The question may be closer than it appears to be.

Waiata Mou Te Ata-Poem For the Day

I hear people talking more and more about the moon and its impact upon their lives, what happens to them with the waxing and waning of our nearest celestial neighbour.

So why not write songs to Her, poems to express our relationship with Te Marama, the Moon?

Full moon song

The menstrual mensual moon,

Rich, pregnant, proud and full,

trailing swirling, skirling skirts of radiant Arabic light,

has nature nurtured herself abruptly up

above the uneven staccato sigh of the island-studded bay frameline

to hang and turn softly in the night.

She flaunts and flounces there,

a courtesan triumphant in her white-lead-lidded makeup;

she knows too much

has seen too much

has come and gone too much

through the orbiting castle doors of the night.

She has pulled the tides of man and time

in a seamless ebb and flow

in glow stanzas,

So she can say,

here I am again.

Did you miss me?

Endpapers

Koorero Whakamutunga

I have been thinking.

I recently talked with a dear friend who is an immensely gifted artist.

"What have you been working on?" She asked.

"Well, nothing at all," I replied. "I am just not feeling the burn."

"Funny you should say that," she replied. "I am pretty much the same. I get out my camera occasionally, excited and keen to go. I am back, I tell myself. It lasts a few days, and then I go 'Meh' and put the camera away again. These days, my creativity is cooking for the protest group around the corner.".

I know what she means. It is hard to be creative at the moment.

And I think I now know why.

Every day, we are bombarded with bad news. Death, destruction, taxes and an incompetent government making decisions we never voted for.

And then I realised that boredom and potential depression were precisely what I was meant to feel, what I am meant to feel.

I am beginning to look at my mobile phone, which is not very smart at all, as a form of ankle bracelet keeping me enslaved and in servitude to the wishes of the Great Algorithm. It is watching me every minute of the day, logging everything I do with it and then using it to feed me. Are we all battery hens?

I begin to wonder if The Matrix is not a documentary after all.

So, what will I do about that?

Fortunately, I have a handful of newly planted cosmos flowers, habanero chilli plants, the wind, stars, trees, and Mr and Mrs Blackbird.

Let me tell you about them.

Just outside our front door is a lovely flat terracotta plate with a stone on it to prevent it from flying away in the wind. It is usually full of water, which we now keep fresh and replenished.

When I go out in the morning to water the garden or check the plants, Mr Blackbird usually waits there, hopping along the bank, occasionally burrowing in the dirt for some creepycrawlie he will have for breakfast. He is always there, hopping here and there but always side on, observing me with one yellow eye or the other.

In the afternoons, usually between two and 4:30 pm, he will come down to the plate for a bath. He will flap away for around 20 seconds, scattering water everywhere, and then, when finished, he will fly away. If I sit inside the house, I am allowed to watch him. However, if I am outside, even though I am standing still, he will perch on the edge of his bath with his back to me but refuse to get in. He is something of a prude.

Yesterday morning, as I went for my morning stroll up the hill, I suddenly observed the small puddle of water in the basin of the aloe plant, the ants already busy scurrying up and down the trunk of the palm tree, and the soft light of sunrise on the Waratah flower in my neighbour's garden.

I will take Mr Blackbird's advice, keep my soul to myself and put my Samsung ankle bracelet in a Faraday bag.

And listen to his wisdom. 

Wherever you are on your path as an expression of IO Matua Kore, the Master of All, may your days be filled with wonder, joy, and a celebration of life's eternal and infinite cycle.

Much love to you all,

Tony/Te Waenga