An immersive installation at Remarkable Park’s Te Atamira has dual meanings.
Christchurch-based artist Melissa Macleod’s works traditionally show what happens when elements combine and produce outcomes, and how that’s met by human desire — things move, change, adapt, succeed and fail — on our terms and theirs.
Her work explores how elemental materials, like earth, wind, air and fire, become animated to take new forms and how life springs forth from the earth, one of the elements that has been a constant in her work, often appearing in the form of sand, since the 2011 Canterbury earthquake.
Her Queenstown exhibition, stones, soil, sand, silt and bones, speaks to the surrounding geography and movement of the earth in Queenstown, comprising large industrial-like sieves that appear suspended from black webbing straps, swaying in the space.
Described as ‘‘part functional, part dreamed’’, the sieves are made from different materials designed to filter different grades of particles or matter — solid, liquid, gaseous or fictional.
Macleod says the exhibition asks viewers to imagine the ‘‘dissolving, dispersion and evaporation of substances around us’’.
It also asks what else people sift through in their lives, what they sort through and separate in the way they live, think, feel and perform, and what happens when things break down and wash away.
According to Macleod, it all comes back to stones, soil, sand, silt and bones.
‘‘It has been an intense period of work to bring to life this project, which in part explores the delicate balance of the earth and its elements and us, the viewers, in the space.
‘‘Unpacking the concept through drawings and marquettes to bring it to life at scale in the Lyttelton Port Wool Store, in Christchurch, has been an invigorating process.’’
Te Atamira director Olivia Egerton says Macleod’s exhibition makes the viewer pause and reflect on the idea of what we, as people, filter.
‘‘As the sieves filter the gallery light through them, the shadows make gentle movement, made by viewers and air conditioning.
“This installation continues to help us, as a local community, explore the space and place we occupy.’’
stones, soil, sand, silt and bones runs till Monday, January 22 — the day prior, Macleod is hosting a sculptural drawing workshop,
‘Capturing the ephemeral’, from 10am till 1pm, in which participants will explore their relationships with earth, water and air.
The concept development workshop’s using transient or ‘ghost’ materials — air, seeds, pollen and dust — with hands-on exercises in two and three dimensions, and a discussion around ephemeral art.
ickets cost $75, via teatamira.nz
