tōu tauira me tōu kaiako hoki is filmed on smartphones and was originally commissioned for the exhibition Whānau Mārama (2021) in Tāmaki Makaurau’s Commercial Bay. Curated by artist Jade Townsend (Ngāti Kahungunu), this exhibition celebrated the period of Matariki, and saw a group of shops "reimagined as spaces for artists and their taonga."
This work is the first part of an ongoing collaboration between Arielle Walker and Emily Parr and continues the layering of image and text, or voice, in a dialogue between the two artists. The work shows many scenes: the sea seen from a moving car, silhouetted fingers creating a cat’s cradle, a maunga with bright sky above, kawakawa in dappled sunlight, te marama in an eclipse.
Across these images we see short snippets of text, seemingly sent along with the video, between Parr and Walker. Each vignette is short and records daily activities, wanderings, whakaaro, and dreams. As the artists move through their days, and send their recordings, images and relationships arise that are familiar from Parr’s and Walker’s other collaborations. As one artist writes, "I’m so drawn to those metaphors, in knitting, a single strand forms endless loops, a path that spirals back around and builds on the rows that came before to become something new."
