Tuarua: Death and Ceremony
Of This Place:
Kōrero with Pip Davies on what it means to be.
2/6
Reluctant Icons 1 - 6
Pigment, art grade resin, re purposed fabric, stones, clay & plywood
25cm wide, 24cm deep, 22cm high
A peek into someone’s inner world.
A kōrero* to bring into your own world.
The following conversation took place at the end of February 2023, at AKINA Gallery in Hastings, New Zealand, Aotearoa. I sat with Pip Davies and Sacha Miriama van den Berg, and took in their stories, of what I later determined to centre around the themes of what it means to be.
Artist and Storyteller: Pip Davies
Gallery Curator and Co-Storyteller: Sacha Miriama van den Berg
As told to: Paige Kaye
Two / Tuarua
Death and Ceremony
You know, those moments where an idea germinates and you don't know where it came from?
I’d been with Fred for a few years and then in 2011 we were hit with a recession. I think we met about 2008, he was a builder, and in 2011 he was laying off his guys because there was no building happening in Hawke's Bay. So he went to work in Auckland and I totally admire that. He took himself up there, lived on his own for the year in a little flat to keep us going.
I was working part time looking after a severely autistic boy, and that was really hard but I thought, I’ve got to get a job. I’ve got to get a job and get Fred home.
Because Isla was still at school we weren't prepared for her to change school, and anyway I didn't want to move up to Auckland; I've done my time there. So, I just remember thinking I could be a funeral director.
And I talked to my friend Vanessa, who, gosh, we’ve known each other since school. She taught me how to drive and she was here at the opening. You know there's people that you keep, just keep them close because they’re good? She's one of those. And she said, I have seen a job advertised in Napier. So I applied for it. Didn't get it but I started thinking and then I went around all the funeral homes but there was no positions at that time. So that's fine. I went back to what now? What am I going to do?
And then they called me out of the blue saying we've got another position. So I said yes and I worked as a funeral director, which is all about people and being able to just be present, and I can do that.
When Isla was sick with leukaemia she had a 20% chance of surviving. So, I did a daily conversation with myself about her dying and, seeing other children I knew die, I learnt that I could live with that. When my uncle shot himself, I remember seeing him when he was home in Takapau. My aunt had him brought home in his casket. I visited with my Mum and there he was in the house. From our world that was unusual and for Pākehā that was very unusual, but she couldn't not have John home. These experiences made me feel I could do the job. I was good as a funeral director because it's about running an event, but being respectful and keeping calm. And I could do that. I also want to do embalming, but they didn't need me to do it, but I saw it being done.
And after a year with that firm, I couldn't do it anymore. They were a family run business who weren’t good to their staff. And Fred said, “don't do it. It's not good”—Fred was back by this time and had a job—so I stopped and helped him in his new business. I also started helping another funeral firm in Taradale. They had both left that same company that I left to start their oen company, so I helped them in an on-call nights and weekends arrangement.
But one day, the embalmer, who also moved from this other firm, was out walking her dog on the Marine Parade. We don't know what happened, but she was hit and killed by a train. I think she might have been distracted, that's all you can think in that situation. And three days after hearing that, Janine and Ross said, “would you be interested in becoming an embalmer?” So that's how I learnt: through the absolute, tragic death of a friend.
But it was a handing on, and I was absolutely the right person to do it because I have a well-developed level of craft and I enjoy problem solving. Every person who dies is a different story, so you don't know what is going to need to be done.
Everyone is your best work.
That's the attitude, you know. It doesn't matter whether the family is going to view or not, you honour the person who was by looking after their body.
There’s craft to this. There’s stitching involved, there’s glueing, it's tactile, it’s using the hands but it's also using the mind to assess the need and in calculating the chemicals. But there's a beginning and there's an end and you can step back from that and go, “my work is done”. And that's a great thing.
I am very valued for the skill that I do for families, and I will keep doing it while I can. I can get a call at any time. And sometimes they are quite difficult events that we have to look after, but mostly it's okay—this is what we do for people who have come to the end of their life. And it’s my job to look after them as well as I can. So, I see a connection through my work and what I do, because it is the level of engagement. Why would you do this work? So someone can say goodbye to someone they love, that's truly valuable. And in the work, I love what I do, and there's that same feeling of being really present.
Sacha: I think Pip, with the work that she does [as a funeral director and embalmer] is really strong in the [art]work. From my observations of working with Pip and what she does, it is actually really deeply connected to her and incredibly personal and I feel like it's even beyond, beyond the observation in the real and going deeper. And I think as a viewer, that is the strength of her work. Aesthetically her work is pleasing, beautiful and interesting. It's intriguing. A lot of people are like, “huh what?" and that's such a good response.
But I think you can't have that connection and the strength in the work without giving that depth and that personal part. Pip, how I feel like you speak about it for you, it's quite literal. But there is this layer, this hidden layer that doesn't quite have words, it's a feeling—again, it’s the vibe—all that feeds into that experience of that work and you just do not have it without that deep connection and personal. That’s the meaning, that's what comes through.
Pip: It is a conversation that I am proud to have, about what I do and to normalise death. I think it's also timely where we are, [as Hawke’s Bay has just had a devastating cyclone]. In the last week, people have died in the cyclone. We just had to think of the grief that's present and that, still, we're all gonna die. It's not an unusual thing. It has to happen. And to have the rituals around that, we're sorely lacking. And so I'm looking forward to conversations at Toi Mairangi because Māori have more ritual, more ways to support themselves culturally than Pākehā do.
Sacha: For sure, even tangi. Three days. Wailing, crying, sharing, eating, we don't leave our dead. They’re never left alone. Even through the ceremony is interesting, we're talking about ceremony because Pip made the reluctant icons for her show, up there [points to midway up the wall on the right hand side of the gallery] . And the physical gesture of the offering of the ceremony, raising up the bowls to eye level or high, rather than down, and you had to reach up and partake in ceremony even through viewing the work.
And it's interesting, the dialogue and conversation and the actions that came out of that with the public engagement. So actually, I go up to people and say, “hey, you can touch these, you could reach up” and it was followed by such awkwardness or that ‘heck yeah!’.
It was the fear. The fear of being wrong, doing something you shouldn’t—even though you’ve been explicitly told it’s ok, it feels ‘wrong’.
It was really fascinating, I got such a kick out of this show from those engagements and this experiment.