Between me and you
ST PAUL St Gallery
With Molly Rangiwai-McHale and Louisa Afoa.
Between you and me continues a conversation between three practitioners who work across sculpture, painting, vinyl and video. While the works could each be considered as forms of speech, the artists don’t claim to speak for everyone. These three women share commonalities, but it is their points of difference which underpin the exhibition.
Natasha Matila-Smith’s work is made in response to spaces—both architectural spaces and those of social media. Often text-based, the narratives hinge on relationships, social interactions, and contemporary politics of romance and intimacy. “Do you ever feel as though you’ve failed at life because you haven’t reached certain milestones by certain ages? As if there is a cut-off period for ‘normal’ experiences? I get anxious when people ask me about my first time, my first kiss, my first everything.” (Matila-Smith, ‘Waiting for love in library aisles,’ Enjoy Occasional Journal, 2018). In recent installation work, the fabric banners are also voices: confessional, declarative, and autonomous.
Louisa Afoa writes, “Growing up I would spend a lot of time in the Papakura library reading after school—fantasy and sci-fi favourites to this day—in those books I would read about mostly white protagonists, chosen to save the world. The characters were never fat; any fat character I encountered was a bully, ‘ugly’ and utterly despised—if the character was a female she sure as hell was never a leading lady to be desired or be allowed to feel desire.” Afoa is interested in reclaiming a femininity that was not afforded to her own large body growing up, creating agency and continuing to diversify the body types we see in public space.
Images by Sam Hartnett.
Between you and me continues a conversation between three practitioners who work across sculpture, painting, vinyl and video. While the works could each be considered as forms of speech, the artists don’t claim to speak for everyone. These three women share commonalities, but it is their points of difference which underpin the exhibition.
Natasha Matila-Smith’s work is made in response to spaces—both architectural spaces and those of social media. Often text-based, the narratives hinge on relationships, social interactions, and contemporary politics of romance and intimacy. “Do you ever feel as though you’ve failed at life because you haven’t reached certain milestones by certain ages? As if there is a cut-off period for ‘normal’ experiences? I get anxious when people ask me about my first time, my first kiss, my first everything.” (Matila-Smith, ‘Waiting for love in library aisles,’ Enjoy Occasional Journal, 2018). In recent installation work, the fabric banners are also voices: confessional, declarative, and autonomous.
Louisa Afoa writes, “Growing up I would spend a lot of time in the Papakura library reading after school—fantasy and sci-fi favourites to this day—in those books I would read about mostly white protagonists, chosen to save the world. The characters were never fat; any fat character I encountered was a bully, ‘ugly’ and utterly despised—if the character was a female she sure as hell was never a leading lady to be desired or be allowed to feel desire.” Afoa is interested in reclaiming a femininity that was not afforded to her own large body growing up, creating agency and continuing to diversify the body types we see in public space.
Images by Sam Hartnett.
