A koru is a trajectory is an exhibition originating from Heidi Brickell’s 2023 Rita Angus Residency, jointly organised by Enjoy and the Rita Angus Cottage Trust. During Brickell’s residency, she spent time connecting with her whenua, researching her legendary tūpuna Kupe and Tara and collecting rākau from Ōtaki and rimurapa from the shores of Te Raekaihau.
Brickell has collaborated with the whenua, moana and atua in the creation of all works in A koru is a trajectory. Rākau sanded by Tangaroa has been lovingly twined by Brickell in varying shades of blue, resulting in contorted sculptural forms that embody the relationship between sea and land—Tangaroa and Tāne. Rimurapa washed ashore has been taken into the artist’s care and warped to reflect its tumultuous journey from the moana to the whenua, much like tūpuna Māori who navigated Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa.
Racing cyclone Gabrielle across the motu to arrive at the residency and watching its destruction unfold across her home city of Tāmaki Makaurau and her rohe on the East Coast, the duration of Brickell’s residency was dominated by the cloud of ongoing ecological and economical disasters. Rimurapa plays an important role in cooling our oceans, but grows scarcer in response to their warming.
A koru is a trajectory is a phrase that came to Brickell as a parallel reflection on the macro forces of late global capitalism and the environmental crises it ever accelerates, and also on how the koru form that pervades mātauranga Māori is a fundamental shape of the physics and of navigation that on a micro level, the body comes to learn how to weather.
