Tuatoru: That takes us to lockdown.
Of This Place:
Kōrero with Pip Davies on what it means to be.
3/6
Akīna Gallery’s physical space in Heretaunga, 2023
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
Three / Tuatoru
That takes us to lockdown.
I’d been working as an embalmer and helping as a funeral director, working on call as required. I was just trotting along as I wasn’t sure whether I had anything more to make.
When (Covid) lockdown came I had to find something to do because there were no funerals, no work for me.
So then we started looking at what's in the house. That's always been a belief for me is you start with what you have. So Fred being a builder, there was always building materials around and my fabric stash was still there. So I started looking at the fabrics that I had and the patterns. I was working with that and layering and wasn't sure how to archive it because fabric is quite fragile when it’s not covered/
My next-door neighbour is a resin artist and so I asked her if we could resin it, what would she think this fabric would look like? I took some samples over to her place one day and had a play. And I thought it does change it, and some things didn't work. But it allowed a layering to start happening and that's when I got into resin on fabric; I started with timber backing and then I realised that I didn't need the timber, the fabric would do the work.
So, all this work [in the exhibition] was based on the fabric, it being hardened by the resin so that it could be either engraved or layered upon. That's a development because of lockdown and it's been the last 18 months of refining.
And looking at maps, something made me want to look and I’m still quite intellectual about it, sort of looking down at the maps and the planes, because it's beautiful. It's just a layer of pattern. And I thought it's interesting to use this fabric as a layer because it's all secondhand, so they all have been made for some other purpose. And now I'm using it as a substrate to talk about living. We are surrounded by fabric, we wear it and it's enabled the species to travel the globe. I mean, it's a technology that's almost invisible but without clothing, we wouldn't have left anywhere warm.
You know, once it started with that, the thread started being woven. It changed. One of my takeaways from being in London—because even though all my family heritage is mostly English, I didn't feel at home there—was going to the Victorian and Albert Museum and seeing the fabrics, and the clothes were like ‘woah!’ That richness of embellishment I still find very seductive.
So that's how that process of coming here started. Just a year ago, Russia went to war with Ukraine. And I had an emotional response to that because I thought well, what would happen if we left our home? What would I miss most if I did leave my home?
And emotionally it was that our dog Ruby was hit and killed by a car just outside our place, and she's buried now in the front garden. That was my strongest emotional tie to this place wasn't the house, it wasn't the stuff I'd made—it was that my spirit was in there with her. So, I made an artwork that was a memorial to her and that was the first feeling of the wairua in the work, that the work was actually comforting me. And that I have reached an emotional level that I hadn't before.
When I was making the vessels that was what came out of the clay. I wasn't getting out of the house much, I needed to do something else with my hands so I joined a pottery club.
I had some clay and I just let myself play with the clay, and that had such a correlation to the body. It feels and it gives and it related to my craft and my work. It started to feel like that clay is the vessel that is left when I look after somebody who’s died. They are the sacred vessel but they are empty. That's my belief, you know, that once you’ve died your body has done its job. But you still want that job, their body.
So, that was the body of work that I had done before I even reached out to Sasha. I had tried some other venues, but it was very hard to even get any attention at all. And by chance I saw something written about Sacha and Akīna Gallery online.
Sacha: I launched the website before anything else
Pip: Somehow I must have seen someone like it or something, I thought, well this is interesting. And then I saw that on the website, there was an artist submission page, and I thought what's to lose? 9 times out of 10 I've reached out and got nothing back. So, oh, well, not gonna get invested. But I took some photos and I sent them off to Sasha.
And there was a little bit of a delay. And I thought, oh, this same story, you know, but then—
Sacha: There was quite a delay —
Pip: It was probably a month. But I had given up. I just, you know, worth trying, but no. And then I got this beautiful email back from Sasha, so apologetic, she just totally owned it. ‘My fault for the delay, shouldn't have happened’, and it was like, Oh, my heart just sort of sang. I just thought this is a real person. I’ll wait. That's alright. She's busy.
Paige: That human touch to it! And what about Pip’s work resonated with what you're creating here [at Akīna Gallery] and to understand a little bit about your driver for building this space?
Sacha: This gallery has always been about heroing and focussing on Māori and Pacifica artists inclusively. So not all of our artists will be Māori or Pacifica, it comes down to the kaupapa of the gallery and if people vibe with that or not. It's very much: people first, art second. So nobody will show here that we haven't connected with and generally it's getting to know somebody first and foremost, and then seeing what they're doing, so a lot of who we select, or what happens, just happens quite organically and it's through connection and things.
And so when Pips email came through—which is so crazy because I love to think someone’s comment is the reason you would have seen it, because knowing how that stuff works—so when Pip’s email came through, I was in the thick of setting up and just had a quick look. And Pip’s photos don't do justice for what her work actually is, and she was really patient. And then finally I got to a point where I could actually go, okay cool, let's take stock on this and I want to meet with Pip and see what's going on. I wanted to honour this, like, I've always wanted to honour what I put out there and what I say I'm going to do and I have started. I really wanted to give anybody who approached me a response. The response may not be the response people want sometimes, but they'll always come from a really considered place and I would have agonised over it, because I did.
And then we met and then I got to see your [Pip’s] work. We clicked straight away and I just could hear how Pip was thinking. The words she was using and the references she was making; just the manaakitanga that came from their home as well, like Fred had baked lemon poppy seed muffins. And I just felt really warmed and I was like, right, okay, Pip is a Pākehā artist. But what she connected on was the kaupapa and receiving manaakitanga from her and Fred really resonated with me. And it was really important. We connected across work, of course, but this manaakitanga has been a really strong theme throughout our whole relationship and the show, and it's come across. So that's essentially what got us to having the show.
And I was just blown away by the amount of work that Pip had been doing. And so what's really important for me to see is that artists are working hard, (Pip laughs: “I was working really hard!”)
Sacha: It was, to me it was interesting, the material she was working with, and I didn't see ‘craft’ at all, not not a drop. And whilst yeah, working with material, and she's a woman that didn't come across.