The Pantograph Punch (NZ)
Have you heard of Artemisia? The question is the title of a poem by Heather McPherson (1942–2017), a feminist, activist, and proud lesbian, as well as a poet. An illuminated version of the poem hangs on the far wall at Mokopōpaki, at the core of This Joyous, Chaotic Place: He Waiata Tangi–ā–Tahu. The text refers to the Greek queen and naval commander Artemisia I of Halicarnassus, a woman in possession of power and prowess who remains under-remembered. Like the poem, the exhibition aims to counter the forgetting of women, paying homage to McPherson and those she engaged with.
Some of the figures represented in the show are comparatively well-known: Patricia Grace, for instance, Joanna Margaret Paul, and Keri Hulme, whose Booker Prize-winning novel the bone people was originally published by Spiral, a publisher that grew out of a journal founded by McPherson. Others are less familiar: McPherson herself, Allie Eagle, and Dianne Rereina Potaka-Wade, whose tāniko ‘sampler’ He Waiata Tangi-ā-Tahu (2018), based on the border of an 18th-century kaitaka, easily asserts itself within a show packed full of artistic and archival gems and curiosities.
Drawing on a profusion of material from collections both private and public (much has been mined from Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa), This Joyous, Chaotic Place blasts the archive open, countering the silence of the library and the standoffishness of the vitrine. As the title suggests, the exhibition is raucous, celebratory, even as it acknowledges marginalisation, oppression, and violence. It serves to remind us of the roots of contemporary feminist movements like #metoo. We stand on the shoulders of Artemisias – and of Heathers.
Francis McWhannell, The Unmissables: Four Exhibitions to see in March (Auckland: The Pantograph Punch, 1 March, 2018)
