‘‘The Order of Things’’, curated by Andrea Bell
(Hocken Collections Gallery)
ONE of the many things that separates humans from other species is the seeming obsession with classification and categorisation, a process which makes understanding the environment more accessible yet simultaneously restricts our vision of it to a narrow set of pigeonholes. Such is the focus of the Hocken’s ‘‘The Order of Things’’, curated by Andrea Bell.
Through a series of artworks and archival materials, we are guided through a meditative, thoughtprovoking look at the classification process, with particular reference to the history of cataloguing in colonial and postcolonial New Zealand. The individual items on display are arrayed cleverly to produce surprising juxtapositions and dialogues; old wooden library signs, for example, are placed next to a found poem created from similar prompts by Ruth Buchanan, and dry manila folders of field notes on Maori prehistory lie directly across the gallery from the much more emotive card chains listing the names of Kai Tahu hapu collected by Walter Mantell in 1848. The latter reminds us that knowledge, like whakapapa, is passed from generation to generation. The display is bookended by two video displays, past and future. The first reflects oral tradition with the narration of a Maori poem, the second examines digital archiving in the age of cloud storage and data harvesting.