Notes On: Seams

Columns

20 Sep

Connie Brown on Turumeke Harrington’s exhibition Gently Ribbed (with Tini Whetū and collaborators), CoCA Toi Moroki, 3 September – 15 October 2022.

In quilting, ‘birthing’ refers to the moment when all the squares are stitched together and both faces of the design are ready to be joined into one blanket. You pin them right-sides-together with the batting sandwiched in between, sew around three edges, then turn everything through. It is the penultimate act in making a quilt. After the birthing, all that remains is to stitch closed the remaining edge and trim any loose threads.

Turumeke Harrington’s Longer than I can remember is made up of around 900 squares of nylon fabric in neon yellow, orange and pink, patchworked together over a ten-month period. To a quilt maker, the work would look unfinished: it has been left ‘unbirthed,’ with the stitching of one square to the next exposed to view, its many seams forming the ‘gentle ribbing’ to which the exhibition’s title could refer.

The work is hung like a room-divider and moves gently as you pass, like a bedroom with all its curtains drawn and windows thrown open on a humid night; and a nook at the centre creates a fuschia interior protected from the hard, echoey space of CoCA’s concrete-floored gallery. Partitioning the room in this way, it reminds me of Richard Serra’s corten steel sculptures, though it couldn’t be more different, or more averse to imposing itself in the space. It hardly even casts a shadow on the ground, just colourful patterns of shifting and warm light.

Longer than I can remember is both a passage and a chamber: A birth canal, the artist says, specifically that of Hine-nui-te-pō, who crushed Māui to death when she came. Each square in the quilt could stand for a single pleasure, labour, idea or act of creation, set aside and serged to another until eventually, there is this thing of monumental scale spread out before us, a record of the many acts of birthing and unbirthing that have taken place (and are yet to take place) in homes, by women, across generations.

Turumeke Harrington, *Gently Ribbed*. Installation view, CoCA Toi Moroki, Christchurch, September 2022. Photo: Nancy Zhou

RELATED READING

E-Journal

Notes On: Utility

Connie Brown on Zoe Thompson-Moore’s Open-field; RM Gallery, 23 November - 17 December

Notes On: Fruiting Bodies

Connie Brown on Georgette Brown’s Tentacular Thinking, And Like a Web; City Gallery Wellington, 3 September – 20 November 2022.

Notes On: Rock Music

Connie Brown on Yukari 海堀 Kaihori’s Touching Time; Audio Foundation, 20 October – 16 November 2022.

Notes On: Steam

Connie Brown on Isabella Dampney’s Feast of the Ass; Te Tuhi, 25 September – 27 November 2022.

Notes On: Ruffles

Connie Brown on Prairie Hatchard-McGill’s Signature Print; Neo Gracie, 28 August – 14 October 2022.

Notes On: Worry Stones

Connie Brown on A Stone, an Echo, a Sign: Aotearoa Jewellery Triennial, curated by K. Emma Ng with works by Becky Bliss, Neke Moa, Shelley Norton, Rowan Panther, Moniek Schrijer, Raewyn Walsh; Objectspace, 10 September – 20 November 2022.

Notes On: The mirror stage

Connie Brown on Rowan Thomson and Peter Derksen’s Transmutations, mothermother, 21 August – 15 October 2022.

Notes On: Seams

Connie Brown on Turumeke Harrington’s exhibition Gently Ribbed, CoCA Toi Moroki, 3 September – 15 October 2022.

Notes On: Redemption arcs

Connie Brown on Claudia Kogachi’s exhibition New Moon, Melanie Roger Gallery, 31 August – 17 September 2022.

Notes On: Crypto doulas

Connie Brown on Simon Denny and Karamia Müller’s Creation Stories, Michael Lett, 6 August – 10 September 2022; and Gus Fisher Gallery, 6 August – 22 October 2022.