"Te Ao‘s reciting to animals evokes a folkloric element. Once folktales were for adults, a way to make sense of the world, but also a way to disrupt it. Folktales taught that being tricky, smart and kind to old women or talking animals would get us ahead. They taught us that fools prosper. That being a bit of a weirdo would shake us out of our social constraints. Folktales are stories of aspiration and human folly. They introduce the possibility of playing the fool as the disruptor of the narrative. Te Ao’s work reintroduces us to the wisdom of the fool. He draws in disorder, disrupting our narrative."(2015,Hubbard)
Te Ao here echoes the Romantic thesis. He brings the pathos of human emotion into an irrational act. He laments loss to the uncomprehending crowd. Unlike the Romantics though, he reminds us that the difference between nature and culture is that we think there is a difference. Nature is an invention of our own, as much as culture is.(2015,Hubbard)
Susan Te Kahurangi King
"This work draws on repetition. It does not appear planned, but it is immediate, working with what is here and now, building upon what already exists, taking a single point or element, a motif, an article of paper doll clothing, and extending it. The pattern surrounds and encases the beginning. The beginning is buried deep within the pattern. Is the pattern the point, or the distraction?"(2015,Hubbard)
"Sometimes drawings are about an external object or objects. They are simplifications or reflections of the outside world. The drawing in this exhibition is not that type. It is interiorised, drawing upon itself, its own internal centre. Each mark is related to the marks already there. Each mark builds on what has gone before. The essence of mark making, the work grows organically into pattern. Pattern flows into pattern." (2015,Hubbard)
"But there are figures at the centre of much of this work, humanoid figures that grow out of hats or curl into pattern, faceless and oblique. The introduction of such figures introduces narrative. We associate people with a story. When I look at photographs or drawings of people I wonder about their circumstances and their relationships to each other. I make judgements based on their clothes, expressions, looks and the contexts I find them in. But here I cannot."(2015,Hubbard)
"The figures tell me a few things. Even though they are distorted, faceless and buried in pattern, I can guess what that might mean. But I can’t confirm that my guesses are true, so I have to be content with my own hypothesis. My vocabulary makes it difficult to access the narrative I am looking for. It seems to turn me back, tie me in and pattern me over." (2015,Hubbard)
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