Mouth: used to speak or to ingest. Mouth: the site where a river enters the ocean.
Past Exhibition
Paraire 6 Ākuhata -
Hātarei 2 Oketopa
Friday 6 August -
Saturday 2 October
2021
Her and Keane take the phrase ‘have you eaten rice yet?’ as a departure point for this collaborative project. Common across many Asian languages and often used in passing as a greeting, ‘have you eaten rice yet?’ holds multiple associations with care: it is an inquiry into well-being as much as being a literal question about eating and food. Within this project, the expression offers a means of engaging with the slippages between written and spoken language.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Feeding a thirsty floor, 2021, Bee Kind floor wax. Photo: Bunty Bou.
While developing this installation the artists hosted a series of shared meals for friends and strangers alongside chopstick-making workshops facilitated by Rekindle . With these events as a base, Made from local and imported ingredients centres food, language, mapping, and people.
Her and Keane present work which explores physical and poetic connections between rivers and the body, specifically the Ōtākaro and Ōpāwaho Rivers, where they meet at the estuary and where they reach the ocean. Another element of their mapping extends to a gesture of care to the gallery, the application of beeswax floor polish. With this action, Her and Keane offer the possibility of recording movement through the gallery over time in the same way we might follow the flow of a river, a sentence, or a recipe.
The Ōtakaro and Ōpāwaho awa, the estuary they merge in, and the mouth they run out of were an important mahika kai for Kāi Tahu, providing food and resources for local and visiting iwi. Blue Oyster Art Project Space, the artists (tauiwi) and this project acknowledge this takata whenua history.
Made from local and imported ingredients includes a text response by Robyn Maree Pickens, developed in conversation with Her and Keane.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Otakaro, Opawaho: Two that share a mouth, 2021, silicone. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Otakaro, Opawaho: Two that share a mouth, 2021, silicone. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Parasympathetic, 2021, audio work, duration 10:52. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Otakaro, Opawaho: Two that share a mouth, 2021, silicone. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Otakaro, Opawaho: Two that share a mouth, 2021, silicone. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Otakaro, Opawaho: Two that share a mouth, 2021, silicone. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Umma & Halabujee, 2021, audio work, duration 17:22. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Text response by Robyn Maree Pickens, developed in conversation with Her and Keane.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Otakaro, Opawaho: Two that share a mouth, 2021, silicone. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Otakaro, Opawaho: Two that share a mouth, 2021, silicone. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Film still.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Parasympathetic, 2021, audio work, duration 10:52. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Otakaro, Opawaho: Two that share a mouth, 2021, silicone. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Made from local and imported ingredients, Installation View, 2021. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Otakaro, Opawaho: Two that share a mouth, 2021, silicone. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Does a river yawn?, Two channel moving image, 2021, duration 13:20. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Otakaro, Opawaho: Two that share a mouth, 2021, silicone. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Image: Orissa Keane & Min-Young Her, Umma & Halabujee, 2021, audio work, duration 17:22. Photo: Bunty Bou.
Text response by Robyn Maree Pickens, developed in conversation with Her and Keane.
Listen to audio works from Made from local and imported ingredients:
Parasympathetic, 2021, audio work, 10:52.
Umma And Halabujee, 2021, audio work, 17:22.
I will wait., 2021, audio work, 2:51.
Orissa Keane
Orissa Keane is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Ōtautahi. Driven by an interest in language, systems, and conventions, Keane’s work tends to be light-hearted and experimental; exposing, subverting and convoluting things taken-for-granted.
Min-Young Her
Min-Young Her (b. 1997) is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Ōtautahi and is of South Korean heritage. Her’s work primarily focuses on viewer discomfort, creating tactile environments that require a trust in vulnerability. This uneasiness or constructed disconnect is a device to explore the tensions in human relationships and to test the limits of our communicative abilities.
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