Breathing space space breathing

Lucy Boermans, Michelle Mayn, Yana Dombrowsky-M’Baye, Shelley Simpson 
28 Jan – 11 March 2023
St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

The exhibition was initiated by phD practice-based AUT (Auckland University of Technology) candidate, Lucy Boermans as an adjunct to the 2-day symposium, Metamodern Creatives (See metamoderncreatives.com).

The Auckland-based artist collective mothermother (mothermother.co.nz) invites two artists at a time to work collaboratively in their Eden Terrace exhibition space. Lucy Boermans and Michelle Mayn met when they were invited in 2021 to create a responsive installation for a 3 week period.

The curated space for mothermother is process-based, transitional and collaborative. Each exhibition, called an iteration, is a reminder that art lives in interaction, and as New Zealand curator, Christine Barton wrote, “history is not seamless, it must be consciously reconstructed.” (artnow.nz/essays/mother-lode?). In line with this nonlinear approach to contemporary art presence, during the 2023 Aotearoa Art Fair, the mothermother collective conducted ‘table chats,’ instead of artist talks. Their tea and cake encouraged visitors and artists to interact around the table.

The St Paul Street Gallery exhibition bore references to
Michelle Mayn and Lucy Boermans’ 2021 collaborative installation in the mothermother space, iteration number 12, (https://www.mothermother.co.nz/iterations/12)

Michelle Mayn has transferred the same materials of intense black flax seeds, with splashes of materials in red, and dried fronds in grid-like arrangments, into new positionings on the floor of the St Paul Street Gallery.

Lucy’s work has transitioned from delicate arrangements between the cracks of the mothermother gallery space to large interactive rotating rods in the more expansive St Paul Street Gallery.

The three piece installation is called “Turning.” The rods turn very slowly, akin to the meditative, however the balls at the ends of the fine rod reminded me that even the spiritual or conceptual rests on physics, when motion is at play. The slowly turning brass spheres almost touch the ground and each other. The work is a response to German/Austrian philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s theories of Atmospheric Philosophy – thinking on the stuff we just don’t notice – the air we breath. (See: “Something in the air” frieze.com/article/something-air)

Stays restrain the rods, keeping each dead straight – under tension – but the only movement of air here is that created by the slow motion of these rods which stop and start in response to the viewers presence. In that sense, human presence stops or starts ‘the breathing space’ of these elegant beasts which ‘breathe’ the air of this gallery space.

There is a soft repeated sound reminescent of life in a harbour of boats – of the soft brush of metal against metal. The continuous movement, like the tidal waters, complement Shelley Simpson’s distilled vine-like horizontals along the walls. These remind me of the undulations of our natural landscape.

Her petri dish, the size of a satelite dish and holding dried organic matter, hangs from bright blue elastic cord.

Yana’s contribution of finger-pressed clay mouldings along the verticals of the walls at various intervals between the other works make evident that this exhibition is the result of their 10-day collaborative installation process.