Ruth Buchanan’s installation (or sculpture), currently showing at Te Papa, is an arrangement of the curtains that she has used in previous works. I like the layers, visual layers, but also the histories that these curtains have and bring with them. I like how the overall arrangement looks like an abstract painting, like a Mondrian grid. I like the translucency of the work, how you can look through to the window and see life continuing outside. (from Instagram post) - The title connects themes of lineage, priorities, and the world through the metaphor of a door or window, referencing both her own biography and the history of the site where the work is displayed, https://www.instagram.com/te_papa/p/DPu8d9Kjupx/

From Te Papa Facebook post: Te Papa - Ruth Buchanan

He ārai whakapapa, he matapihi ki te ao.

[Priorities, whakapapa | Or, Door, window, world]… is a new commission by Ruth Buchanan (Te Atiawa, Taranaki iwi) made over the last decade with, for, and around inspiring interlocutors and context.

Each of these sections are layers in a whakapapa conversation, connecting to the artist’s biography, the architecture of the gallery, and, the close proximity near Te Aro pā – a significant settlement for Taranaki iwi and which Buchanan descends from. This work is all about continuity, and how to amplify what it is you might already have, and might already be doing.

Ruth Buchanan, ***He ārai whakapapa, he matapihi ki te ao* | *Priorities, whakapapa | Or, Door, window, world…***

(from my essay) Judy Millar, in discussion with Jarrett Earnest in 2023, describes every painting as a PROPOSITION. Influenced by many readings of The Shape of Time by George Kübler, she enjoys the concept of Kübler’s non-linear take on art history, in which painting is not a sequence of stylistic periods but becomes a chain of problem-solving responses, which inspire or provoke.[1]

[1] Earnest, interview with Judy Millar, Brushstrokes in Documents, 331.

Ideas for the Final exhibition