Wā We Can't Afford: Heidi Brickell

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'Wā We Can’t Afford' has grown from Heidi Brickell’s time as Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery’s inaugural visiting artist, spending six weeks in residence during late 2024.
Across her practice Brickell explores how we navigate the world in relation to mātauranga Māori and the human knowledge and wisdom held in relation to our natural environment. In 'Wā We Can’t Afford', she continues to meld experimental and customary forms, techniques, and materials—from whakairo and kōwhaiwhai to installation, sculpture, and painting. Her installation responds to the unique geometry of the gallery’s architecture, and the significance of the climate and bodies of water in orienting herself in Te Matau-a-Māui Hawke’s Bay.
Brickell has worked with paewai (driftwood) and rimurapa (native bull kelp) found along the shores of Ōtaki and Te Raekaihau. These buoyant, resilient materials play crucial roles in the life cycles of both land and sea, embodying turbulence and vulnerability at the thresholds between whenua and moana, Tāne and Tangaroa. Rimurapa, traditionally used for preserving food and known for its ability to anchor in rough waters, faces threats from warming seas. Driftwood, while helping to slow coastal erosion and providing habitats, also accumulates in excess due to forestry slash and serves as a constant reminder of Cyclone Gabrielle’s impact on the shores of Te Matau-a-Māui and the East Coast.
Alongside these materials is an “exploded painting” on pieces of mounted canvas placed around the gallery, based on pūrākau (ancient stories), rivers and tributaries. Brightly coloured thread has been wound around flexible wire, and moulded into tendril-like forms that reach out to grasp at different elements, grappling with binding them together. In the precarious economic and environmental conditions of the present, the artist’s choice of title (wā referring to “time” with implications of connection, collaboration, and imagination) invokes the urgency of attending to our most fundamental and sustaining relationships.
Heidi Brickell (Te Hika o Pāpāuma, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Tāmaki-nui-ā-Rua, Rongomaiwahine, Rangitāne, Ngāi Tara, Ngāti Apakura, Airihi, Kōtimana, Ingarihi, Tiamana) is based in Ōtaki with a background in Kura Kaupapa Māori education and te reo Māori revitalisation. Her work has recently featured in major surveys of national contemporary art in public galleries and is regularly exhibited at Laree Payne Gallery. From 2022-23 her solo exhibition PAKANGA FOR THE LOSTGIRL was toured from Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery in Tāmaki Mākaurau Auckland to Ōtautahi Christchurch and Pōneke Wellington.
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