Soft Landing is a group exhibition featuring work from artists Heidi Brickell, Vita Cochran, Finn Ferrier, Serene Hodgman, Fiona Jack, and Kathryn Tsui. The exhibition brings together a selection of artists who each engage with textiles on their own terms, incorporating material aspects into distinctly different modes of making. While their practices vary greatly, many of these artists share a similar engagement with narrative – real or imagined – and a preoccupation with re-addressing or re-presenting histories. Historically speaking, traditional textile arts have somewhat been maligned and dismissed as insubstantial. But it is arguably this exact history that makes textiles so engaging; their tactility and ostensibly quiet nature allowing for the deft navigation of complex ideas, providing a soft landing for sometimes heavily political concepts.
Read Emma Ng's response to the exhibition .
Heidi Brickell (Te Hika o Papauma, Ngati Apakura, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Rangitāne, Ngāi Rongomaiwahine) is based in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau. Her work is grounded in the psychological and informed by her fascination with the interplay of multiple languages, spoken and unspoken, human creations that enable or facilitates exchange, while also being marked by imprecision. Her solo exhibition Pakanga for the Lostgirl also opens this March at Te Wai Ngutukākā (formerly St Paul's Street Gallery) in Tāmaki Makaurau. Other recent exhibitions include He Pāoro Perea at Kaukau, Pōneke; Floundering Arms Swallowed by Pendent Whenua at Paludal Gallery, Ōtautahi; Alluvial Hours at Laree Payne Gallery, Kirikiriroa; and Nine Māori Painters at Tim Melville Gallery, Tāmaki Mākaurau. Brickell graduated with a Master of Fine Art from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2011. Her work in te reo Māori revitalisation and education feeds into her artwork.
Vita Cochran is based in Sydney, Australia. Cochran received a Master of Arts in Art History from the University of Auckland (1998). Since then, Cochran has made handbags and other objects informed by a keen knowledge of art and design, drawing upon modernist forms and feminist histories. Cochran’s recent exhibition An Anthology of Bags with Anna Miles Gallery, Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau, saw Cochran present over 40 bags made over the last twenty years. Another project saw Cochran replicating rugs as featured in famous paintings, among them Giorgio de Chirico’s The Disquieting Muses (1916-18); Édouard Vuillard’s Three Women in a Room with Rose-Coloured Wallpaper (1895); Henri Matisse’s Large Studio (1911); and Sonia Delaunay’s Groupe de Femmes (1923-24). Other recent exhibitions include The Stories We Tell Ourselves at The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt; Lounge Muse and Painting, Painting, Painting at Anna Miles Gallery, Auckland; and Pocket Histories at Te Uru Waitakare Contemporary Gallery. Cochran’s work is held in private and public collections including Te Papa Tongarewa, the Otago Museum, The Dowse Art Museum, and Objectspace.
Finn Ferrier lives in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau where he often works with objects held in the collections of galleries and museums. Ferrier’s intimate knowledge of craft histories and materials informs his own practice. His Wharfware series began in 2009 as an exercise in creating soft vessels out of single piece of rope. There is an explicit and playful engagement with the materiality of rope and its associative histories and utilitarian purposes. Ferrier say, “These vessels are constructed with the idea that they could be made at sea by a sailor, passing time by creating decorative objects for their surroundings. These vessels are the logical progression from the practice of decorative knots.”Recent exhibitions include Finders at Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui; Leading Lights at Masterworks Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau; Changing Threads 2021 Awards at Arts Council Nelson; Soft Garniture at Te Uru Waitakare; and A Few Too Many Hangups at The Tuesday Club, Tāmaki Makaurau.
Serene Hodgman is based in Tāmaki Makaurau and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts at The University of Auckland (2014).Inspired by her Samoan heritage, Hodgman carefully embroiders and weaves silk ribbon through the surface of woven plastic mats sourced from local emporiums, creating vibrant works that pay homage to traditional Pacific making practices including tivaevae, ‘ie toga, and koloa.Her Seililoquies Series is a play on the Samoan word ‘sei’ or ‘flower’, the works exploring the way in which flowers have customarily been gifted as a form of emotive expression, but also speaks to the way in which the artist processed her own ideas amid the solitary experience of making work during lockdown. Recent exhibitions include Cloth at Masterworks Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau and Pua Series at Masterworks Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau.
Fiona Jack is based in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau. Jack has a Master of Fine Arts from the Californian Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles and is Acting Head of Elam School of Fine Art at The University of Auckland. Her practice considers environmental and socio-political issues, with projects often involving aspects of participation, consultation and/or collaboration with individuals and communities. Everything / Nothing came out of a series of banal photos Jack took around her neighbourhood during lockdown, which she then digitally printed on a range of fabrics with machine embroidered text. The works speak to a wider body of work, including a recent project for The Lightship at Ports of Auckland, Tāmaki Makaurau. Entitled Everything (2022), this large-scale LED work responds to Jacks’ first major public artwork Nothing™ (1997) and reflects on global change in the 25 years between Nothing™ and Everything. Other recent exhibitions include Riverbed at Artspace Aotearoa, Tāmaki Makaurau; Our Red Aunt at The Glasgow Women's Library, Glasgow; and Using Our Hands to Organise at The Showroom, London.
Kathryn Tsui is based in the Coromandel Peninsula. The Ahmah Bags Project (2018 – 2022) references Tsui’s Chinese heritage and is a collaboration with her mother Doris Tsui, recalling the time they spent as a family in Hong Kong in the 1970s/80s. The project translates the tartan patterns of mass-produced Hong Kong shopping bags into over 34,000 cross stitches. Commonly known as Ahmah (domestic servant) bags this labour-intensive project involving over 240 hours of repetitive stitching somewhat honours the countless hours of domestic labour – typically undervalued – upon which every household relies. Tsui has a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology (2007). Recent and upcoming exhibitions include Summer Salon at Masterworks Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau; Text Tile at Caves, Melbourne, Australia; Ā Mua: New Lineages of Making at The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt. Tsui will be an artist in residence at Driving Creek Railway in Coromandel later this year.
Soft Landing is presented in conjunction with Threads: Textiles Festival, a programme of art events that will take place across Te Whanganui-a-Tara from 16-20 March 2022. Timed to coincide with the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts, the festival will shed light on contemporary and historical textile practices in Aotearoa, placing renewed emphasis on the medium.
