Art Exhibition - "Dirty Thoughts" by Noa Noa Van Bassewitz

Dirty Thoughts, by Noa Noa Von Bassewitz, contains three full size parachutes, small anchor-like artifacts and photography. This solo exhibition is the realisation of a process of discovery and exploration by the Te Whanganui a Tara based artist.

After decades as a print maker, the last seven focused almost exclusively on woodblock, Von Bassewitz has taken to poetry, written by a mother who is deeply perturbed about the world she is sending her children into. The artist/author’s facetious humour becomes more and more explicit as she tackles her otherwise dire subject matter, in order to make the topics more palatable.

Three poems, Strategic Plan for the Big Three, are transferred to parachutes, a strong and resilient piece of equipment, a life saver, a delicate personal escape provider. Parachutes provide Von Bassewitz with the perfect material, rich in history, volume and strength.

These parachutes are the vehicle for her once private thoughts, which come across as flippant, using deliberately inappropriate humor to air serious issues in public.

According to Von Bassewitz, “Laughing is good for the soul, saying it how you see it can lead to release, beauty can also be medicine.”

Noa Noa Von Bassewitz(Maori/German) is a Te Whanganui a Tara Wellington-based artist. She works in various print mediums including wood block, etching, mono-print and mixed media. She has shown at galleries in Wellington, Tauranga and Raglan. Her work has been selected to illustrate poetry and most recently as the cover for a Massey University publication (2023) edited by Witi Ihimaera and Michelle Elvy. She has been a featured artist in Tākahe and Flash Frontier as well as Art Asia. Artworks are held in private collections in New Zealand and abroad.