AROHA NOVAK — BUILDING AND WATERPROOFING A POOL
PAINTING bitumen sealer on to marine ply does nothing for the hands. Aroha Novak might have escaped the painting to do this interview but the bitumen still clings to her hands.
She is working against the clock to get her ambitious project, ‘‘Cascade’’, completed in time for tomorrow’s exhibition opening.
It is ambitious because she is creating a pool on the second floor of DPAG, a pool with a rain shower above it — running water in an art gallery.
That means she has been on her hands and knees sealing, resealing and sealing the pool again to ensure there is no way water can escape. ‘‘We can’t have any leaks.’’
The project has required Novak to learn a lot of new skills, but that is what her art practice is all about.
‘‘I try to keep open to different mediums and ways of doing things.
‘‘I have a short attention span so it’s good to learn new skills — but there is a fine line between learning new skills and mastering them.’’
Just like learning to cast concrete figures or painting the large murals she and streetart partner Guy HowardSmith have created around the city (Buller St, Rattray St).
‘‘You gain more confidence; you can gauge the wall better and the paint amount.’’
While her latest project has tested her technical skills, it is also extending her body of work around the concept of catharsis, using water as a metaphor.
‘‘I’ve sort of veered off to look at the Romantic period of painting and the work of William Hodges, Captain James Cook’s official artist on his second journey to New Zealand.’’
One work in particular has captured her attention, a 1773 painting of a water scene in Dusky Bay/Cascade Cove.
‘‘I decided to recreate or represent this painting in 3D through my own perspective rather than a European male’s perspective.’’
Alongside this is Novak’s own exploration of her partMaori heritage. She has been learning te reo and researching her whakapapa in an effort to reconnect with a part of her family heritage she did not know much about.
‘‘In a way, this project tips into that.’’
She hopes the pool will create a ‘‘utopia inside an institution’’ with the idea it will bring spirit into a confined space or rigid structure — ‘‘a Maori worldview within a
Pakeha structure’’.
‘‘I’m trying to create a space where you can go and sit and feel like you are in an outdoor space . . . but you are inside.’’
Its creation has required much technical advice and help from DPAG’s technical staff.
Another Dunedin School of Art graduate, Novak, a mother of two, completed her master’s degree in 2013 and is ‘‘stoked’’ at getting the opportunity to show at the gallery.
‘‘I’ve been grinding away for a long time so it’s great to be able to work with the gallery and also to realise a work on such a large scale with technical help. I’m used to doing everything myself, so this has been a bit dreamy.’’
TREKKING through quarries and looking down road manholes are not everyday activities for an artist.
But for Charlotte Parallel it became an integral part of her investigation of Dunedin’s landscape; in particular, what it sits on — a volcano and the idea of ‘‘listening through rock’’.
So she enlisted the help of a geophysicist to provide equipment to help her understand its history.
‘‘We ended up in all these quarries. So all this rock, basalt is our roads, the sides of train tracks. So then I was quite interested in the idea of how it’s being used.’’
That raised the dilemma of how to get under the roads.
So they asked the Dunedin City Council’s water services if they could open up their water holes so they could put in place sensor instruments. They also put one in the Speight’s tunnel.
‘‘One of the amazing things about the manholes was there are all these underground streams like Toitu run through so there was this beautiful way of thinking about all these systems from the road down.
‘‘It’s totally fascinating. Thanks to the generosity of the water services guys.’’
Some of the pipes were built in the 1800s and that got her thinking about how the earth has always been moved and changed.
For ‘‘Deep time’’, her work at DPAG, she wanted to bring all forms of the rock — concrete, sand, asphalt and bitumen — together. So she made 12 1.5mhigh concrete poles from the different materials.
They have room for copper telephone lines to run within so people can listen through classic landline attached to the poles.
Parallel wanted to show the ‘‘strata’’ of use as well as the ‘‘cycle of uses’’.
‘‘It’s quite physical work to make. It’s been a great opportunity to learn to make new things and meet amazing people.
‘‘It was really nice, all these different processes I had to learn to do.’’