The galleries: Stories beneath the surfaces
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5:00AM
Thursday April 03, 2008
By T.J. McNamara
Surfaces can be something to paint on or paint about. Rona Ngahuia Osborne, whose Wahine exhibition is at the Lane Gallery until April 12, uses special surfaces. Her work is appliqu?? collage and the surfaces on which she applies her images are recycled woollen blankets with pale faded stripes. She is aware that at birth, in sickness and in death we are often embraced by blankets.
She adds to the blankets cut-out, stylised, Maori-inspired motifs of hearts, tongues, mouths and appealing hands and, above all, tears. Areas of light and dark also play a part in the quiet drama of the work.
The effect is touching and the careful hand stitching that joins the images in these works makes them intimate. Not too long ago, hand stitching was thought to be particularly appropriate to women's art but here the handiwork is an integral part of the work.
A typical piece is the one that gives its name to the show, Wahine, with a stylised head flanked by tears of pain in red and tears of joy in white. There is a similar construction in Salve, a work of greeting and love where a red heart indicates emotions and a pale cross indicates faith. In this work, as elsewhere, the pale, worn surface of the blanket reflects experience but is intruded upon by a dark, melancholy corner.
