An Artist's Gotta Eat
Text copyright Mark Amery & the Dominion Past
It doesn't seem so long ago that video art was treated like the grubby, fuzzy unsaleable black sheep of the fine art family. In these days of the DVD projector and widescreen you're now expected to have a good artistic reason for littering a gallery with trails of cords and an assortment of second hand TV monitors.
A case in point is He Waiata Whaiaipo a beautiful set of three new moving image works by Rachel Rakena. Screened on sleek, black framed flatscreen monitors with small computers built in behind, the works can be bought as is to be plugged in at home, much as you might hang a painting.
A video artist has gotta eat. Just as any artist hopes to produce big works for public exhibition but smaller commercial gallery work is there bread and butter, Rakena's work here feels made for domestic, if wealthy settings. While framed stills from her previous work on show in the stock room seem like cheap souvenirs of the powerful real thing, these new, seductively-simple moving image works are arguably the best work of hers I've seen.
The works are essentially about eating, love and beauty. A man naked (at least to the torso), seductively and sharply lit, is filmed carefully and lovingly eating fish heads and a mango. He sits like a floating mythical figure in the blackest of velvet nights before a table of water, his actions accompanied by the pleasurable sounds of his deep sucking of juice from the meat and fruit.
Rakena seduces with high-end, high definition gloss, but this is meant as no criticism. There's a distinct echo in this luxuriant approach of some of the best work of fellow Dunedin artist Ralph Hotere. An exploration of the power and depth of blackness as both an ocean and star-lit sky of emotion. With her exquisite care for her images' construction Rakena recognises that care for technique is as important in film as in painting. A waiata whaiaipo is a love song, and here the love bestowed is as much for the lap of water and play of light on skin of film as it is for the love of a sweetheart and fresh unadulterated food.
It's not all perfect. The smiles at the end of each gastronomic performance are a little forced before the beautiful final release of a large guffawing belly laugh (a cameraperson-to-subject "say cheese" moment). And the longest of these works, ‘Ka u kai a te po' feels like it was made first, the camera jumping around in perspective to no great effect.
Rakena's positioning and study of her subject in space and time however is as sensitive and rich as a dramatically lit Caravaggio. The canvas is an ocean of deepest inky black where you are captivated by the illusory bottomlessness of the surface, not sure if it is sea, sky or furniture.
Rakena's interest in water and motion and their exquisite treatment is reminiscent of the large poetic ritualistic works of celebrated American video artist Bill Viola. Like Hotere and Rakena's past work, this is art concerned with our closeness to water, the fluidity of this relationship, and the preciousness (with every smack of the lips) of kaimoana. Rakena's veneration of the act of eating gives it and the food of the ocean respect, as if these were votive images (objects of veneration for the Gods, as currently on show at Mark Hutchins Gallery) for Tangaroa.
With the subject's delicate dedication to enjoying every bone of a fresh fishhead, and in the absence of a knife and fork, the work makes you appreciate that this is as sophisticated an act of eating as it is filmmaking. The works all beg to be placed on a wall at the head of long dinner tables, to accompany the chatter of the most sumptuous and over dressed dinner parties.
A nice companion to these works is to be found round the corner in Cuba Street at Enjoy Gallery. For Massey graduate Darryl Walker's exhibition a series of individuals were trained to perform native bird calls. The viewer sits before a choir of monitors featuring individuals in their homes before their treasured possessions (each environment treated as if it were a nest) giving their all with impersonations which could be read to reflect their diverse personalities. This is a nice opening exhibition by Walker, starting to explore how, just like with the bush's dawn chorus, in diversity there can be found community, and in collaboration difference can still be treasured
He Waiata Whaiaipo, Rachel Rakena, Bartley and Company, until 13 June
In Dialogue, Darryl Walker, Enjoy Gallery, until 13 June.
By Mark Amery Courtesy of The Dominion Post
