Present Encounters : Papers from the conference of the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, 1996

Auckand's recently opened Harrah's Sky Casino, the image of the Waka emerges again as a localising cu ltu ral gesture, works commissioned by Maori and Pakeha Artists suggesting transformation and Magic. Some of the transformations that take place within the Works of the New Zealand Artists dwell on the ephemeral , changes of state, matter-configuration-matter. Within that cycle, remain gaps, an amorphous location, often things appear most clearly, or make themselves obvious at their point of dissolution . Aotearoa , the Land of the Long White Cloud, still remains, hovering above and on the surface , the Collective Field translates the Cloud to a fog , a mystical M I ST. In the book lmperium by the Polish writer Ryszard Kapusci nski the Author records an encounter with a young girl in a suburb of Yakutsk. There is a golden mist which descends on the streets and it holds the shape of the last person to walk along it. It is possible to know who has passed by the shape left in the Mist. 73