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| Lorene Taurerewa (detail) charcoal dust on paper, 157in x 157in |
If a single time and place had to be determined the scene of Ms Taurerewa’s drawings, the evidence would draw us to such a photography studio of the mid-19th century, the shaky imminent time of steamships and cameras, of quick escape to who you might be, of eternal capture as who you are. The still gaze of their characters is not, though, the Victorians' determination to become something else, but the shell-shocked stare of their children and great-grandchildren: the jetsam of the 19th and 20th centuries, the debris of internal emotion, hope, tie, loss and regret, tossed in the mix of incomprehensible shocks that propelled us on our epic and pitiful quests, the sundering path that proved to be only the unending circle of refuge. Along the path they have collected the costumes of the colonial centuries; the colonization of society, and of class, and of culture, and of race and of mind. On this path they have learned that leading and following are the same; bullying and humiliation, manipulation and empowerment, cruelty and caring are the same act. Their sexual identities and power constructs have formed through untraceable moves on the board-game, from a chase of personal fears and silent instincts, choreographed by the unseen hand of the past. They have re-assembled here like aged children ultimately drawn back to the scene of their parents’ murder. From the intervening years they return forged as a circus-troupe of world-damaged fakers and posers, refugees without refuge, without option but to team up with other orphan misfits to form a family; taking up their assigned roles, living by their wits, making the best of the hand they are dealt; carefully, fondly ironing knife-creases into the layers of irony that dumped them into this world; they bear up, present for the camera, and play the role to the full.
Ms Taurerewa shifts scales and frames the way Shakespeare would set a play within a play, to structure different layers of fiction, and thereby invert the relationships of cause and effect. Are the small people controlled by the big people? Do they represent the big peoples’ thoughts; in which case do they control the big people? When the big people come out onto the stage – get up on the table – are they puppets or puppeteers? The viewer is invited to separate the layers of feint and fiction and trace the path of cause and effect, to find the weapon and discover the scene, designate the victim and the perpetrator. But these are not layers to be separated: rather roots hopelessly knotted; tangled from trying to grow in the inhospitable soil of our era, or perhaps of our human nature.
Physically, and therefore sensually, we are put together as tubes of skin with holes; and so defining where we begin and end, where inside becomes outside, is as arbitrary as the placement of a mark upon paper. As our skin which, Möbius-like, loops and re-enters itself, paper both contains no space and intimates the presence of spaces when its sensitivity is called to respond to marks. The connection between sensation-motivated mark on paper and sensation-imprinted mark within ourselves is heartfelt, direct and undeniable. This is the final level of fiction, one where viewer can no longer place him or herself independent of the artifice; and so in the end the very direction of the pursuit is in question. The crime is undeniable, the wound is open, the cruelty is bare; but if we are to move on and away, the case must stay cold.
Lorene is Represented by ROOM ARTSPACE NYC http://roomartspacenyc.com/
This Is No Fantasy, Melbourne, Australia http://thisisnofantasy.com/
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