“Surfacing”, Emily Parr
(The Physics Room, Otautahi Christchurch) www.physicsroom.org.nz/exhibitions/surfacing
There are many compelling works in Emily Parr’s (Ngai Te Rangi, Moana, Pakeha) exhibition at The Physics Room in Otautahi/ Christchurch, which is made accessible through excellent documentation. Comprising 35mm film photographs and drawings that centre on whale migration, two photographs in particular stand out: one chilling, the furnace at the Waiopuka Whaling Station (Waiopuka
Whaling Station (Furnace), 2021), and the other poignant (Tiaki’s Flukeprint, 2021).
Tiaki is one of the paraoa (sperm whales) Parr saw off the Kaikoura coast, and flukeprint names the fleeting patch of calm water after the paraoa has dipped its fluke back underwater. The poignant or arresting quality of this photograph is catalysed by the dynamic of absence and presence. While the paraoa is beneath the waves, Parr’s decision to omit Tiaki is at once respectful and melancholic, as his bodily absence gestures towards the precarity of all ocean life as water warms and begins to acidify.
This threat of absence and loss is amplified when considered alongside the hungry mouth of the whale station’s furnace, but correspondingly signals the potential for redemption, as campaigns to protect whales have been moderately successful. Parr’s research and resultant artworks also extend to encompass her ancestral connections to Samoa and Tonga and correspondingly to the birthing grounds of paikea (humpback whales) at Vava’u in Tonga. Parr’s accompanying essay articulates Ngai Te Rangi connections to paikea, to rivers and whenua in ways that emphasise the linked lives of human and nonhuman beings.