The effect is the latest skill artist Sorawit Songsataya learned as the Frances Hodgkins Fellow in Dunedin, and will be part of their contribution to the group show “Nature hazard revenge” at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery (DPAG) this month.
“It’s quite exciting for me. It’s all these opportunities to create images of a real place or a real object.”
With the freedom to simply create art, Songsataya has contributed to six exhibitions across the country so far this year.
“It’s been a crazy year. I thought I’d have a lot of time to read, but I still haven’t gotten to the central library. I couldn’t have done it without being full-time.
“I used to juggle two side jobs and the studio. Getting paid and having studio space, that’s such a different story.”
They enjoy the time to explore and learn new digital techniques, especially in animation, which is a larger part of their practice. It allows them to reconstruct surfaces of actual objects in space.
“Since I’ve been here, I’ve learned so much. I’m self-taught with everything, thanks to YouTube tutorials. Animation is quite exciting. You usually see it in ads or very commercial, but I think it has a lot of potential [in art]†
To date, Songsataya’s works have evolved from physical sculpture (such as a life-size fiberglass moa surrounded by smaller native and endemic bird species created for the Auckland Art Gallery) with video to more digitally focused works with animation.
“I’m not an artist with a signature style – I like to be very versatile and flexible.”
That means the fellowship studio space is empty and tidy as they work on their digital offerings for the DPAG show, an exhibition of paintings by the late Alexis Hunter that stem from a feminist and environmental consciousness of the 1980s, in conversation with new commissions from Songsataya, Evangeline Riddiford Graham and Deborah Rundle.
Songsataya’s work for the exhibition, crown shynessis on the tallest tree in New Zealand – an Australian mountain ash Eucalyptus dominans (Purukamu) planted in Orokonui Ecosanctuary circa 1870 – using 3D mapping of the bark. They then used a photogrammetric processing technique to convert the video footage of the tree’s trunk into a series of “point cloud” data. This data is used to translate geospatial information into a new, structured landscape. Played on stacked vertical screens, the animation shows the digital “skin” of the trunk, composed of small polygons extending upwards. In another order, 3D cascading particles illustrate the law of gravity.
It is a sequel to “Otherwise-image-worlds”, a group exhibition presented by CIRCUIT in collaboration with Te Uru in Auckland earlier this year, where they used a scan of their mother’s home in Thailand, showing everyday objects such as her cactus room and a lotus flower. basin in the garden is filmed by animated hands holding a mobile phone.
“I look at the idea of a place and the reconstruction of a place from memory.”
Concepts of ‘home’ can be complicated for Songsataya, who was born in Thailand but grew up in Auckland, where they studied art.
“I didn’t really set out to be an artist. I didn’t really know what it means. I’m not good with language, but I’m good with visual things, so I did a degree in visual communication.”
While studying painting, the limitations of two-dimensional work began to chafe and they moved to moving image for their postgraduate work at Elam. They also experimented with 3D printed objects presented alongside video. By 2018, video installation had become the main medium of their work.
“It’s always been this relationship between tangible objects and the material nature of the digital environment. I like to look at the idea of what is considered living and non-living things.”
Using three-dimensional animation, they can express those ideas, and they are also shown in the sculpture Songsataya does. As part of their fellowship work, they will cut limestone into large vessels, adding organic and non-organic material in a more architectural style.
“People say that earth, stones or rocks are not alive, not living things. I’m not trying to say directly that stones have lives, but I think I’m trying to get the public to rethink what is binary between living and non-living.”
Another aspect of their practice seeks to blur the lines between genres. “I think it presents a spectrum of insights.”
While their fellowship work is still in development, Songsataya says it will work with ideas of home and the sense of calling New Zealand home when it’s not their homeland.
“It’s been a constant contentious experience, and then there’s the complexity of… [colonialism]† My relationship to place can be tricky. Every time I go back to Thailand, I feel like a foreigner there too.”
They have also taken the white heron into their nesting site on a river on the west coast and plan to return there in the spring.
“They are very common in Asia. It was really bizarre to see them in a strange environment. Through the birds I try to relate or connect them with ideas about making home and my memory of home, and seeing them in Thailand and what the birds mean culturally here and also in Thailand.”
“Natural Danger Revenge” curator Sophie Davis says she chose Songsataya to feature in the exhibit because they have an interesting view and relationship with the natural environment that is often “playful” and accessible, but also “thought-provoking.”
“You get the sense that the tree is this vital being and you think about how art can be used as a tool to rethink the way we think about nature and other living things around us.”
It was also an opportunity to take advantage of Songsataya being in Dunedin for the fellowship and to connect with the city’s arts community.
“It grounds the exhibition in a local context.”
Songsataya’s work is shown alongside the work of Hunter (1948-2014), who moved to the United Kingdom in 1972. There she became part of the feminist avant-garde art movement, creating photographic work based on mastering the language of film and television styles, but returned to New Zealand in the 1980s and developed a neo-expressionist painting style at Elam under Colin McCahon.
These works reflect the turbulent 1980s when the punk movement in London and political issues such as nuclear threats dominated. It is from this era of work that Davis selected from public collections in New Zealand to exhibit.
“Her works have been a passionate rebellion against some of those things that happen in society and it brings them into conversation with three new committees.”
Davis also selected Graham, a Nelson-born New York-based writer and artist to showcase, as she was working with the artist on an exhibition when she first saw Hunter’s work in Te Papa in 2016 and could see the connections. to see.
“There was something about these works and Hunter. It was the first premise for this show.”
Another link was that the DPAG has a Hunter work in its collection, which depicts a feral-looking black cat ready to strike.
“That work also served as a touchstone.”
Graham, whose work considers persona, gender and power and how this plays out in the performance of characters in literature, has created a new audio work, mother juggernaut (2022), voiced by a ‘needy millennial’ daughter who leaves messages on her mother’s phone, playing in a living room installation.
“It plays on generational tensions and also references a landmark in her local cityscape of Brooklyn, New York, the Green Point water treatment plant where the daughter works, and so an environmental theme comes through there as well.”
Rundle’s interest in politics, history and labor movements made her a perfect candidate for the exhibition, Davis says. She has used a range of leftover textured roof tiles in My body (2022), which includes language referring to body sovereignty: “In my body you still write your name”. It harks back to the 1970s when Hunter produced her work, but also reflects on where ‘we’ are now. The words fade in and out of sight as a person moves through the exhibition space.
“She often uses language and sculpture in such a way that she often creates experiences for viewers that are engaging, but also have a strong political charge for them.”
For Rundle, the work has even more “deep resonance” following the overturning of the Roe v Wade decision in the United States.
“The rights over your own body and who has anything to say about what it means to be human in this world.”
Together, all the artists say something interesting about where we are now, and the role of art in it, says Davis.
“They also bring out a wilder, interesting part of Hunter’s work. The show has a lot of different textures, audio, digital video, wonderfully wild expressionist paintings, old-fashioned furniture combined with a 90s answering machine.”
† Next week: Deborah Rundle’s Blue Oyster Exhibition “Tomorrow is Today Now”.
To see:
“Natural Danger Revenge,” Alexis Hunter, Evangeline Riddiford Graham, Deborah Rundle, and Sorawit Songsataya, DPAG through Nov. 6.