Tim Wigmore: Precious Cargo
City Gallery Wellington | Te Whare Toi
Deane Gallery, 16 February–21 April 2013
Tim Wigmore, matai cabinet, with kōauau by Brian Flintoff, 2012
Waka huia are small wooden chests that safeguard taonga (precious objects). Their exteriors are often elaborately carved to reflect and enhance the prestige of their contents. Precious Cargo reworks this traditional Māori form to consider the connection between vessels and their contents. Artist and furniture designer Tim Wigmore is interested in the way waka huia both respond to the taonga they contain and can be viewed as art objects in their own right. For the show, he asked six renowned artists and craftspeople who use native timbers and materials to produce an important tool in their practice and built bespoke cabinets to house each of them. The show celebrates artists and craftspeople from diverse backgrounds who cross cultural divides through a shared enjoyment of native materials and ways of working.
The following essay is taken from the catalogue publication that was written for the exhibition:
Tim Wigmore: Precious Cargo
by Reuben Friend
Tim Wigmore's Precious Cargo exhibition reworks the traditional Māori waka-huia form in new ways to look at the connection between vessels and the objects they contain. Waka-huia are small wooden chests made to store and safeguard taonga (precious objects). The exterior of waka-huia are often elaborately carved with ornate surface designs that reflect and enhance the prestige of the objects held within. As an artist and furniture designer Tim Wigmore is interested in the way these vessels respond to the taonga they contain and their ability to be viewed as art objects in their own right.
For Precious Cargo Wigmore approached six New Zealand artists and craftspeople asking each to identify the most valuable tools used in their practice. Each artist then created a bespoke version of one specific tool and in return Wigmore has made small storage cabinets to house each object. Each cabinet is constructed using materials that correspond to the specific practice of each artist which, like waka-huia, are designed to enhance the importance of the tools and the function they perform.
Wigmore has constructed one cabinet using kōrari shoots for Veranora Hetet, one of New Zealand's leading exponents of raranga (Māori weaving). Korari are the long slender wooden shoots that grow out from the centre of harakeke (flax) bushes. In responding to Hetet's weaving practice, the lid of this cabinet is constructed from three separate pieces of laminated kōrari that fold in on one another like the strands of a kete (woven basket) to seal and protect the object inside. For Wigmore this form of protection evokes the old Māori proverb: 'Unuhia te rito o te harakeke, kei whea te komako e kō?' (If you remove the centre shoot of the harakeke, where will the Bellbird sing?'). Inside the cabinet sits a makoi or kuku shell scraper—a tool Hetet uses to scrap the green material off the strands of flax to reveal the fine muka fibres inside.
For Nga Waiata, an artist who often incorporates native timbers into her jewellery, Wigmore has created a pohutukawa cabinet that requires people to insert their finger through a small circular hole in order to open the vessel, revealing the pohutukawa ring-sizer inside. Pohutukawa timber is also used on the opening latch for tohunga whakairo (expert carver) Lyonel Grant's carver's-mallet cabinet.
Once again Wigmore has constructed the cabinet using the same materials of totara and pohutukawa. The long thin rods on the exterior of the cabinet are a reference to the bark of the totara tree.
Wood-turner and sculptor Graeme Priddle's chisel cabinet is constructed from puriri timber. The lid opens like the wings of the puriri moth which makes its home in the trunk of puriri trees. The top of the cabinet has an interlocking system of cogs that allow the lid to open smoothly. Wigmore uses this mechanism to reference the historical use of puriri timber by early settlers as cogs and machine beds because of the hardness and durability of the timber.
Mãori musical instrument maker and performer Bryan Flintoff has created an ornately carved matai kōauau (flute). The kōauau is cased within an ovoid shaped piece of matai timber that has been hollowed out to echo the form of the kōauau. Like the puriri moth in Graeme Priddle's chisel chest, Flintoff's cabinet also references a native moth called Hine Raukatauri or the casemoth. The female casemoth caterpillar is known for its long cylindrically shaped cocoon from which, after pupating, it sings a barely audible song to attract a mate. According to legend this is the origin of all Māori wind instruments, hence its namesake Hine Raukatauri, the maiden of music.
Like the movement of air in and out of a flute, Flintoff's kōauau slides in and out of an opening at one end of the cabinet. Ceramicist Chris Weaver's cabinet has a similar opening mechanism incorporating a rimu lid that slides open to reveal a rimu and wire clay-cutter —the sliding action simulating the movement of the wire clay-cutter as it slices through a block of clay.
As with waka-huia, the technical skill, time and consideration that has gone into creating these vessels serves to enhance the importance of the objects they contain and the activities that surround them. In this way Wigmore has elevated the craftsperson's tools and the storage vessels that house them from mere utilitarian forms to art objects, celebrating the essential role they play in the process of creative activity.
From a Western perspective appears to cross the boundary between art and craft, engaging in both conceptual and aesthetic concerns while also dealing with utilitarian issues around form and functionality. From a Māori worldview however, these distinctions around art and craft, or artist and craftsperson, do not exist and are irrelevant. Rather, terms such as taonga, a catchall phrase for all valuable manmade objects, and tohunga, a term indicating mastery of a subject, are used to denote artistic excellence. Precious Cargo brings these two worldviews and modes of creative expression together, taking ideas and cultural art forms from both cultures to form a uniquely New Zealand bi-cultural design methodology.
Tim Wigmore is interested in the way that New Zealanders share not only ideas but objects and physical spaces, how various cultural practices and customs can be melded together and be manifest in physical form. For Wigmore, the joy in creating these works is in the invention of new and exciting ways to engage with people and the everyday objects we fill our lives and environs with. These are works that operate on multiple levels. As Wigmore states "I strive to connect people with their things— to design objects that people will enjoy conceptually, physically, and emotionally." At the core of this project however, is a desire for engagement; engagement between people, cultures, objects and spaces, celebrating the ability of artists and craftspeople from various backgrounds to cross the cultural divide through a shared enjoyment and use of native timbers, materials and ways of working.
Artist Biography
Tim Wigmore was born in Canada in 1977 and lives in Wellington, New Zealand. In 1998 he gained a Bachelors Degree in 3D Design from Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland. Since 1999 he has worked in film at Weta Workshop and various other production companies and galleries making models and props before shifting focus to work full time as an artist and furniture designer in 2011. Wigmore's furniture designs often push the boundaries between interior design, installation art and exhibition design. He regularly exhibits in New Zealand and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Edge (2012), Sydney Conference Centre, Australia; Why Milan? (2011), Objectspace, Auckland; Furnish (2011), The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt; Salone Satellite: Milan Furniture Fair (2010), Milan, Italy; Ply-ability (2009), Hawke's Bay Museum and Art Gallery, Napier and the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (2008), With Essenze, New York. Recent accolades include being a Salone Satellite Award Finalist (2011), Milan Furniture Fair, Milan, Italy; finalist in the Home & Entertaining Design Awards (2011), Auckland and a 2009 selection as one of the top ten Australian and New Zealand Designers in Design Quarterly magazine.
