Like a broth, like a cure features the work of three artists, Aroha Novak, Sriwhana Spong and George Watson in an exhibition curated by the Physics Room’s Director, Abby Cunnane, that is sublime, as refined and aesthetic as it is questioning and confronting .  The exhibition proposes that ‘wellness involves both an engagement with the heaviness and specificities of colonial histories, and finding ways to revitalise ourselves in the present.’  Cunnane describes the work of these artists as contending with ‘historical narratives or structures that invite continual research and knowledge that may be difficult to reconcile.’ 

Sriwhana Spong’s large yellow watercolours, Sigil (Rothschild’s mynah), references an endangered bird species from Bali, the magic capabilities of the sigils an assertion of the  role ‘of non-scientific knowledge.’  Aroha Novak’s, MAURI-FY, 2024, is realised in materials  and objects from her studio and garden, directing attention to the often  unanticipated values of our relationship with nature, and George Watson’s Disavow, references Victorian era architecture in relation to its legacy for indigenous people and land.

Cunnane writes: ‘Illness and remedy are historical constants, and also particular to our present in which virus, disease and fatigue affect the everyday lives of so many people and the planet itself. Speaking with Aroha over the past couple of years about her work, something that has come up often is the need to allow time for rest within a practice, rest as a remedy in itself.

In Aroha's work there is a consistent undercurrent of research in relation to indigenous plants and tīpuna knowledge recorded or passed down, as well as the hands-on processes of experimenting with different materials.  Each of these processes is a form of learning, with the understanding that being able to learn is also fundamental to wellness. Sriwhana's work This Creature deals with the recorded life of Margery Kempe, a 15th-century mystic whose spirituality revealed itself in floods of tears. This raises the idea of spirituality as inseparable from the human body, as connected aspects of the self.   I became interested in the idea of the voice, or writing, as a kind of antidote to pain or grief.’

‘As much as illness, grief, and remedy may be universally legible ideas, in each of these works there's a clear link to acts of naming and claiming. The form of George's work, Disavow, quotes a Victorian era wrought iron gate design and in so doing the lifestyle ambitions of early settlers to Aotearoa, reliant on the theft and privatisation of Indigenous land.’ 

‘At the same time as the work is a gate which regulates entry, as a mirror it visibly embodies the light and foliage of the outside world, even enveloping visitors to the space. Sriwhana's Sigils (Rothschild’s mynah) refer to a critically endangered bird indigenous to Bali (jalek Bali) re-named after the British ornithologist Lord Walter Rothschild who financed the collecting of the species. The cause of these 'illnesses' is not mysterious; rather the works register different symptoms of a pervasive colonial programme. (More broadly, it's clear that war, such as the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and the military industrial complex itself are primary contributors to climate and biodiversity crises.)’

‘I don't expect the works to carry the weight of grief and illness in the world, nor to offer a remedy. More so, I see them as doing the work of holding specific and complex narratives in a state of vitality. And that in this state exists the possibility of wellness.’

DETAILS

Aroha Novak, Sriwhana Spong and George Watson, Like a broth, like a cure

The Physics Room, 301 Montreal St, The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, 31 May – 14 July

IMAGE
George Watson, Filial love (detail), 2022, mirror, cnc cut acrylic, steel. Image from Envy Gallery, Wellington by Cheska Brown.