Always Song in the Water began with a dinghy that resides on poet and artist Gregory O’Brien’s front lawn in Hataitai. Observing it each morning and through the seasons, its hull upturned to the sky while vines of clematis clambered aboard, for O’Brien the small vessel became a symbol of the ocean’s restlessness and of Aotearoa New Zealand’s place at its southern edge. These reflections eventually became the basis of a book, Always Song in the Water: An Oceanic Sketchbook (first published in 2019), which then became the basis for an exhibition of the same name, now open at the New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa through late February 2024. A new, expanded edition of the book, published by the museum, covers the evolution of the exhibition and features over forty new works from the current project.
The exhibition presents an array of artworks that invoke the sensory and poetic allure of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, The Great Ocean, from artists who can trace their origins across its expanses and beyond. Among them is Dame Robin White DNZM, who presents a new work for the first time, titled In the Offing (2022). The ‘offing’ refers to the far part of the sea just below the horizon line, where freight ships shrink to the size of sardines. White draws us into this elusive site, this ever-distant place of seabirds and weather, offering an imagined glimpse of the ocean’s far reaches, a glimpse, as the double entendre of the work’s title perhaps suggests, of what’s to come.
The work’s metaphor carries throughout the exhibition in several ways as it explores the many oceanic histories and futures that pass through Aotearoa New Zealand. Here, we speak to O’Brien about the coming together of this project and highlights from the collected works.
A sense of the many different courses on which the ocean can and does bear us comes through strongly in the exhibition. Can you tell us about how you came to encounter some of the works included?
I had the good fortune of travelling to Nuku‘alofa via Rangitāhua Raoul Island back in 2011 as a participant in the Kermadec art initiative. That left me well placed to witness the production of an array of ocean-themed works by John Pule, Phil Dadson and others over subsequent years. The sense of encounter—and adventure—that was at the heart of the Kermadec voyage is the crux of the current exhibition, which is also full of echoes, cross- currents and connections. As the title suggests, the exhibition is a songbook, and amongst the diverse (and surprising, I hope) group of singers who have joined the original Kermadec artists are Chris Charteris, Laurence Aberhart, Joanna Braithwaite, Angela Tiatia, Yuki Kihara and Karl Fritsch. Like the ocean, the exhibition is polyphonic. My co-curator Jaqui Knowles brought a number of artists to the project, introducing me to Lianne Edwards’s revelatory works, Neke Moa’s carved stone and shell, the dreamy sub-aquaticism of Joyce Campbell and much else.
‘The vessel’ is a recurrent presence, though it takes on several different forms—in ceramic, for example, or as jewellery objects. This project began with the image of a boat, your own dinghy. How did working on the show expand your understanding of the vessel’s potential meaning?
There are a good number of vessels in the exhibition—from Jeff Thomson’s corrugated rowboat, Tiger, to David Trubridge’s oceanic windsurfer. The Parkercraft dinghy I keep on my front lawn is very humble by comparison! Among the other oceangoing vessels in the exhibition are those of Euan Macleod, Denis O’Connor and Noel McKenna. Beyond its accustomed symbolic and metaphoric meaning (as the Ship of Life, the Ship of Fools and so on), the dinghy figures, in the present era, as a lifeboat— the last resort of the climate or political refugee. It is also a great extension of the human body— ‘the ribs of the great canoe’ … Robin White’s vaka, in the work mentioned earlier, makes us aware of the oceanic vessel’s capacity to travel between cultures as it does between islands. And then we also have vessels—such as Denys Watkins and Bronwynne Cornish’s Wheke vase—which are designed to hold water rather than sail across it.
Epeli Hau‘ofa’s ‘Our Sea of Islands’ has been an important touchstone for this project. Hau‘ofa’s essay emphasises a continuity between land and sea, and connections between peoples that cross and encompass the Moana Oceania region— ideas that your project expands upon. How does the exhibition think about this sense of connection, the ocean as a common thread in the experience of all New Zealanders, alongside the frictions of these oceanic encounters?
Epeli Hau‘ofa had a phenomenal intellect—but at least as impressive was his generosity of spirit and warmth. I hope the exhibition has something of Epeli’s brightness, openness and sense of connection. He and another great ‘oceanic’ thinker and poet, Teresia Teaiwa, are two abiding spirits of our project—as is Ralph Hōtere (to whom I dedicated the book Always Song in the Water). Ideas of identifying with Moana Oceania—a trans-national, pan-cultural proposition—are at the heart of the project. For nearly all New Zealanders, the Pacific is a foundational reality … but then we have to come to terms with the fluidity of the thing. And its vastness. In terms of the exhibition, I think it is a quality of poetry and song, rooted in many cultures, that allows us to understand and feel deeply where we find ourselves in the world.
What is the significance of presenting these artworks at the Maritime Museum?
Given the attention being paid to the state of our oceans and to water-related issues in general, the Maritime Museum is the perfect platform for Always Song. Located on a wharf on Auckland’s waterfront, it’s apposite that these oceanic-themed works are shown in a space that is surrounded by water. You can hear the rustle of waves beneath the museum’s floor and listen to the sounds of gulls, harbourside activity and the midday blast on the institution’s cannon. The museum retains something of that workaday, waterside flavour, an informality and energy. Aptly, it is a place of loading and off-loading, of arrival and departure. Exchange. A decade back, I curated the exhibition Kermadec—Nine Artists Explore the South Pacific for the Maritime Museum. Working here again has, for me, the quality of a dream or re-awakened memory. A fair wind in my sails has brought me back here.
Are there any words, of your own, or another poet’s, that you would like to leave our readers with, for their visit to Always Song in the Water?
The words of Hau‘ofa and Teresia Teaiwa crop up at opportune moments in Always Song in the Water—in both the book and the exhibition. There is so much I am still learning from those two great spirits. Epeli wrote: “Oceania is us. We are the sea, we are the ocean.” I find the ramifications of that statement endless. It is, at once, a challenge and a gift, a call to action, a song we are all a part of.
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