Aroha Novak brings Cityscape up to date on her research into the forgotten flora of Hagley Park, and giving these plants a new life through art.

Tell us about your work for SCAPE Season 2021. The work I am making for SCAPE focuses on the site-specific history of Hagley Park pre-settlement, particularly looking at the indigenous plant life that was removed in order to create Hagley Park. While researching I found a list of native plants that botanist JB Armstrong notated in 1864 at the Hagley Park site and got really excited at the prospect of showing these plants. The artwork will be large-scale botanical drawings of these missing, absent, forgotten, lost, eradicated plants and whakataukī related to this research. I am also proposing to create a small publication of the plants, which will look and feel like a botanical field diary, referencing the large scale works, with more of the research inserted alongside whakataukī.

Where is it going to be? Various sites around Hagley Park.

How does it fit in with the SCAPE 2021 theme ‘Shadows Cast’? This work is exploring the notion of bringing back ghosts that were supplanted by a colonising and institutional framework. In this way, the shadows cast are from the ghosts of plants and people from the past.

How did you choose the materials and colours? I am embroidering straight onto scrim material – a building material used to wrap around scaffolding and ubiquitous in the Ōtautahi landscape – creating botanical line drawings through embroidery. I wanted to reference construction materials but also traditional making techniques. Stitching onto this material creates a type of shadow drawing in the space around it.

What statement is this piece making? This work is questioning institutional frameworks, ways of cataloguing and naming whilst highlighting te ao Māori worldviews where the environment is paramount, looking at the past through a contemporary lens and remembering what was there before.

What do you hope people will take away from experiencing it? At the very least, I hope that people will enjoy the use of materials and the positioning of these works, and most I would like people to try and understand the te reo kupu – words – and think about how these landmark parks have been made over the course of history, how colonisation has affected land and people and the ongoing repercussions of that, I hope they will come down the research wormhole with me and be fascinated with the work of botanists.

What materials do you most like working with? I love to experiment with different materials, quite often letting the project dictate the direction. I really enjoy constructing three-dimensional objects with building materials but also soft materials and paint, I love figuring out new ways of using drawing in different mediums.

You seem to enjoy exploring different media and styles in your art – what ties your pieces together? I think a common thread throughout my work is research and scale. Whatever I am looking at project wise, I like to dig into the history of the thing, place, site and I like to work on a large scale, challenging myself and pushing the capabilities of a medium.

What is the importance of art to a community? Art can connect people from diverse backgrounds together, it can create a reaction – good or bad – and then conversations and dialogue, it can reinvigorate, beautify, gentrify, uplift a space, city, or suburb, snap people out of complacency, lull people into an escape, be part of the fabric of a society, be a Pokémon battleground, give people a sense of pride in their environment, share knowledge, tell stories and create stories.

What is your favourite piece of public art in Ōtautahi? Ooh that’s tough, there are so many art works that I like. I really like Ngā Whāriki Manaaki that was designed by master weavers Morehu Flutey-Henare and Reihana Parata which is in front of the Bridge of Remembrance. I love that Ngāi Tahu arts are being celebrated and Māori art forms are being represented on a large scale within public infrastructure. I also love Michael Parekowhai's Chapman’s Homer outside the Christchurch Art Gallery because of his skill in the medium but also that whole work from the Venice Biennale captured my imagination.

What are you working on next? I am co-curating an art exhibition with three other wāhine that will be at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery from November. I am also working with another artist on the design of an entranceway for a land reserve on the peninsula of Ōtepoti, commissioned by the Dunedin City Council.

arohanovak.com