Layers of Time

11 November, 2019

This artwork was part of our exhibition "Listening to the Land, an Exploration of Connection to Place". It is a multimedia installation circling around a glass vessel filled with muka (fibre from harakeke / phormium tenax).

When I process muka in order to spin it, I can't use everything of it. Not willing to through anything away I collect the residues in a jar and eventually the time I spent with these beautiful fibres becomes visible in unexpected dimensions.

"Layers of Time"

How do we spend our time and what effect does that have on us and others?

I choose to spend endless hours with muka, completely absorbed by watching, feeling, smelling the fibres - listening to the plant I love. What is she teaching me? Where is she leading me? I can only hear her when I‘m still.

Moment by moment, breath by breath we are growing together, riding the wave of something bigger then us.

Time becomes visible layer by layer.

Organic matter builds up and with time will reduce back into soil.

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Muka in a glass vessel (some of it dyed with harakeke seed pods & toatoa), photographs connected by hand spun muka yarn, audio-video installation

All my hand spun muka yarns in the exhibition were represented in the glass vessel of this installation.