The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

WHEN YOU RETURN ... Left: John Pule Tapuakianga 2001 Oil and ink on canvas 200 x 180cm Centre: I had a mind as invisible as light 2002 Oil and ink on canvas 200 x 180cm Right: High and low 2002 Acrylic and ink on canvas Diptych: 200 x 360cm Collections: Private Images courtesy: The artist and Gow-Langsford Gallery, Auckland The performances of Mau proliferate in a sequence of lyrics on an imaginary serpentine line that traverses several countries, an exhilarating axis virtually invisible although various parts of its terrain can be seen when growth is imminent. Avoiding a severe depersonalisation of languages, cultures and artefacts, Mau induces unstable matters to manifest in sounds, prominent instrumental noises of survivors surface to make us sad to see countries destroyed, these are captured in pre-bombing tours in schizophrenic bondage with America who is bosom buddies with Japan, New Zealand and Australia . Mau slows dance down to eliminate translations of ordeals of the closed face of colonised soil, the interior wallpapered with sick British flags, sick American patriotism combined with puzzles of imperial histories. Intelligible forms in the air do absorb blood from my imagination, for the one reason to reinforce an autobiographical desire to live on another man's land. Immediately separating my mind and voice from the ill– mannered infelicitous non-redeemable exchanges, available in large quantities when attending curators' board room meetings, where pastoral scenes are still part of the equation, romantic streams and sylvan gardens. There is a pioneering experience to be had when confronted with the baffling criteria of exhibitions dissociating territories deemed pluralistic. John Pule Tapuakianga (detail) 2001 I first encountered Mau performing Lo'omatua 1996 recapitulating ghosts, artificial respiration of senses, and secreting mulattos from sweat, precariously demanding I release a procession of the equinoxes. Lo'omatua personified fine mats for the soil to flourish physiologically on the body; rituals of sounds escalate surfaces to cultivate when a negative paradigm hinders my view, exuding water as a growing respect for the past. Mau further developed mineral matter derived from disintegrating paradigms by extending capillaries carrying soil constituents of his country into Rare 1997. It is necessary to secularise alteration to air, since islands are now linked by sea and not isolated by old views based on academic doctrines. Compelled to make flesh real, Mau succeeds in shedding the coffle of memories down, seeking freedom from the anxieties and disturbing entangled exchanges. Ava 1998 revisited these exchanges. I was in time to see black shaping light to show a pathway predestining new directions for soil. After the consecration of the elements that burdens and offers no sanctuaries in churches or prayers, membranous sacs containing bread, blood, a jug of pure water (the Western symbol meaning the land has never been written on), hovered above the bodies. These collections of religious references were further explored, culminating in the surveillance of cultures in Boneflute ivi ivi 2000. Using night as canopy Boneflute ivi ivi consumed the spirit from one of the great poems of Oceania, inside us the dead woven into my flesh like the music of bone flutes. My personal interpretation instigated and sanctioned imports of labourers disguised as different people. Small sweats bound permanence with dying clouds as material to weave a spine. A country without a spine has no sky, involving tangata whenua soil; consonantly declaring two countries can boogie together. Composed mostly of compartments, with gaps of course, eliminating contentment and the occasional panel discussion in how to murder a precious belief, decode material cultures, appeared with instruments demanding sovereignty. There is a house inside the word bone. I believe this bone is part of the spinal vertebrae closest to the head, spatially designed to view distance as destination not commodity, and to support acoustic sounds in music of bone flutes on impact w ith greeting air. 33