Arielle Walker / Emily Parr

Whiringa-ā-Nuku (2021)

19 min 26 secSingle channel / Digital Video / Colour / Sound

Whiringa-ā-Nuku sits alongside the works tōu tauira me tōu kaiako (2021) and Mahuru (2021) as another maramataka cycle of correspondence between Parr and Walker. As in Mahuru, this work was made during the 2021 rāhui where Aucklanders were required to stay at home to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The video diary shows small day-to-day encounters the artists made: the sky, te marama, harakeke, a collection of buttons from a late grandmother, the burning embers of a fire.

The video vignettes draw lines of connections between the two artists and their experience of the rāhui, but also across time to tīpuna and their continued presence in the world and in memory. “I have been thinking of my great-great-grandparents today,” one artist writes, “I wonder if they knew of this locket; if they ever imagined a great-great-grandaughter who might wear it someday.”

This work was first exhibited at Kū Kahiko, a gallery run by Moana Fresh in Tāmaki Makaurau.

Other works in this series

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