Tuatahi: It’s been a life in the making.
Of this Place:
Kōrero with Pip Davies on what it means to be.
1/6
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.
To be learning.
To be growing.
To be ignorant,
and to be of this place.
Editing has taken place in the months that have followed. I share this for transparency into my process, as Pip offers hers later in the series. Like Pip, I’ve been feeling out what happens next.
I’ve listened to the hour and a half recording of our conversation, and typed it all out how I feel it was meant to be understood.
There are six parts to this blog series, loosely resembling the six reluctant icons of Pip Davies’ inaugural gallery-hosted exhibition, Of This Place. Pip herself could be seen as areluctant icon, but this only adds to the intriguing nature of this contemplation of what it means to be.
In a time where short-form content thrives, this blog has come together at its own pace. I hope that you’ll take it in at your own pace too. So much has happened in between our conversation and when you’ll be reading this—but we’ll come to that later, so as to not distract from these chapters.
To honour the value of manaakitanga, I encourage you to sit down with a cuppa and a bite to eat as you move through these words. This is a conversation among friends. Pause, reflect, or just take in what is real for you in these moments.
*A kōrero is a conversation or discussion to those not familiar with the Māori language. In this case, it could be a chinwag, or chat over a cup of tea.
Artist and Storyteller: Pip Davies
Gallery Curator and Co-Storyteller: Sacha Miriama van den Berg
As told to: Paige Kaye
One / Tuatahi
It’s been a life in the making
I left school and went to Dunedin when I was 18.
It was a time when if you move to Dunedin you don't do it for money. It was a very creative place and you could make things and no one expected that you would sell it. So I was an artist making things you could not buy. It was art as thought. I started doing sculpture and lived on nothing. This was in the early 80’s and I made, sort of, installation works.
I was six years down there and explored all sorts of things; I was making, putting lines on things and exploring how things sort of hang—those sorts of ideas.
And then I got into animation.
I bought a BBC computer; it was what you could buy at the time and you programmed it yourself. And so I was making these self-generating pieces that you could watch, and were always evolving because of the way the code was written. But I couldn't go any further with that because the next step up was a computer the size of a room. What intruged me was the stepping back and not knowing what it would do next.
So I thought well, rather than making this sort of movement, what about if I think about people moving?
So, I moved up to Auckland, and I did theatre costumes because that’s actual movement and I worked with these dance people because I had a cousin who did it—word of mouth.
And that's where the fabric came in. I was never a sewer, really, but I've never let an absence of skills stand in the way of a good idea! And it was on the back of it that I moved to the UK because someone said, “if you’re going to do theatre customers you need to go to London”. So I did.
I was in London for a year and a half, it wasn’t really my place. I didn’t really have the skill set or the contacts; I found that in New Zealand someone gives you a go, but it’s not the same over there, especially when it's costuming, but I did have a job with a local theatre company for a while.
I stayed on a bit longer than I planned too, making that decision just a few days before I was due to leave the first time. It was all a bit complicated but the short story is I got pregnant, came home, and raised my son, Sam.
I was able to buy a house because I'd saved up some money because the English exchange rate was good; three-for-one at that point. And back then you could get a housing corp loan so I was able to buy a home in Grey Lynn. So, I was a full-time mum and was making things with fabric; but my focus was on being a mum and we had a lovely big garden and a house I played around with. And then five years later I unexpectedly got pregnant with Isla and so I carried on.
I met someone, and that wasn't great. Those were difficult years of being married to someone who wasn’t who he appeared to be.
And Isla got cancer in the middle of that.
So that sounds all very intense, and it was. But that's what you do. You listen to anyone's story, everyone has hardships and something they've overcome.
Coming back to the present, I feel very lucky because I live here [Haumoana], and I’ve been with Fred for the past 15 years and he loves my kids, and they love him. And we’re very lucky. He is my number one fan. He loves that I’m an artist and that I’ve created and self-directed shows. We hired the foyer of the opera house in 2010 and I had an art show there. Fred made all the boards. And one at the Hastings City Art Gallery, all self-directed.
Before meeting Fred and doing those shows, I did a fine arts and design degree at EIT. Before then I had been self-driven and self-taught but a friend was there and was really enjoying it. I did those three years and expected it might develop into something else, but it didn't. My greatest takeaway was that I learnt Photoshop because I still use it in this environment. For this exhibition I could take pictures of the space and clear it out and install my work [on Photoshop] because I knew how to do it. So that's been a really useful thing, and the flipbooks I made during my course were done through Photoshop, so the takeaway was a formal learning, but it also gave me confidence.
In this art world, it helps to say you've got a degree. It means that it's just one less thing that someone can say no to, it doesn't mean that you'll get anywhere but it shows a commitment to what you do and that you have some awareness I guess. But still there is a prejudice as to what is art and what is design, what is craft, and I've always sort of seen it all as you know, as making stuff. And what box that stuff fits into shouldn't make any difference, but that's still a quite strong prejudice unfortunately. So, I think a woman using fabric it's just still there. Men can do that, but as soon as a woman's doing anything to do with stitching and fabric its abck to being downgraded to craft. Just such a silly prejudice.
Craft is your commitment to what you do.
You know, a painter is a craftsperson, a sculptor is a craftsperson, a musician is a craftsperson. The craft is the commitment to what you do and doing it. That is your language. So for me, it's the argument that craft is the basic mechanics of making something, and you could leave it at that. But art to me is the story and that's what I look for in work. I can see something beautifully crafted. I can see art all the time being beautifully crafted and to me, that's all it is. It's just a beautifully crafted piece. For me it doesn't feel like art unless it speaks.
Art has a story. It has feeling.
Of This Place
Pigment, art grade resin & re purposed fabric
125cm high x 58cm wide