Te Hā o te Marama: Simon Kaan and Wi Taepa

Response

8 Aug

Simon Kaan and Wi Taepa, *Te Ha O Te Marama.* Installation view, Sanderson, Tāmaki Makaurau, August 2021

Within the gallery space is jettisoned.
Dark pellets of lifeboat like footholds for my hands,
I see it all the more obliquely I stand.

Taepa and Kaan met many years ago, and reconnected through being serendipitously in the same place.
When asked where Taepa was, and would he like to collaborate, the answer is I am here, and yes.
The pair were both in Dunedin, a length away, the distance of a few stones thrown and carried by the wind. They had not known this until then.

Taepa’s ceramics are rich.
Taepa’s ceramics are of the earth, clay that has been coiled and pinched.
Clay that has been borrowed and weighted and waits,
To sink into the body it once came from.

Slits in the earth are painted with vertical flicks, kicking out from the surface and joining the boats that skim. They jut out, if only visually, surrounding layers awash with sweeping lines that penetrate within.

When the moon is seen from a certain vantage point, then sky and water and land are pulled like mud.
When oil sits on water it is not easily mixed. Kaan has painted these fissures thick to stand their ground. He has painted them atop, shadows and cracks an indelible sound.