THIS IS SHE
My name is Liv.
I was born in Wellington, NZ but grew up on a divine little organic farm in Hawkes Bay. Days were spent on my pony, around cattle, chickens, fruit, dogs, at the river, the beach or at the other kids homes down the road. I lived with my two sisters and amazing parents. Mum is a homeopath. She thinks and lives in the esoteric, metaphysical realm and deep sensitivity and awareness ripples through her words and her life. Dad is a designer. He is practicality. He can build anything, design anything and sees the world in its 3D form. My gorgeous parents paved the way through both nature and nurture to being an artist.
I majored in sculpture and it was not all smooth sailing. I resisted making when there was already so much in the world. In the things I did make, I was always trying to rectify our relationship with nature but my attempts often fell short. I think making singular objects or images that tried to talk about these huge, complex issues didn’t work for me. After the wild earthquakes that began in 2011, I started to collect physical waste from the broken buildings. I was interested in how we as energetic beings activated the physical world. These buildings had been lived in and energized for 100 years then they broke, were discarded and pushed into dormancy. I catalogued these objects in museological arrangements but also breathed momentary activation into them through creating transitory sculptures. This project aligned with my interests and intentions. It worked because I found a way to look not at things, not at objects, not at physicality but the space in between, the connections, the places where life seeped in.
There was just one problem. The collecting was heavy. Literally. I had 1000kgs of iron, wood, concrete and bricks. It was not sustainable. In the summer of my graduating year an opportunity for funding and physical spaces to create public work in the CBD was offered through The Social. I took this opportunity and transitioned my catalogue process from physical stuff to plants and the Botanical Appreciation Project was born. I went to the wild lots of our broken CBD and took stock of what grew there. The medicinal, material, edible and metaphysical information on each plant was recored and put into posters and postcards. The project was generous, insightful and soft and I realized how much I wanted to work in the CBD and how much I wanted to work with plants. Thus, PLANT GANG was born.
I began cleaning the human accumulated waste from the wild lots. Gifting care and cleaning to forgotten spaces. I then had another opportunity for funding and space and set my sites on a more ambitious project. Myself and an ever evolving gang built a zen garden. Over the course of six weeks we moved materials around a site and trimmed trees, added large rocks from the red zone and formed a space that was welcoming, contemplative, calm and generous. It was much needed among the heavy, mechanized demolition of the city. Over five years we completed a number of projects and collaborations.
Fast forward though to 2018 and Plant Gang exhausted me. It is so so hard to plant life into rubble that is controlled by bureaucracy, government and old school thinkers. 2018 was the time for me to listen to my quiet voices asking me to seek different paths, to shed my skin and focus my energy into the ideas and actions I couldn’t do when Plant Gang was at the forefront of my life.
I have been pursuing a studio based practice that encompasses some of the thoughts and theories raised in Plant Gang. I am still so interested in the world that exists on the edge of our perceivable reality - this is the world where activation, consciousness, presence and potential are alive. This is where aliveness is alive. I want to step beyond the perceivable sphere and harness the might and magic of earths existence. The serene and subtle - the crazy and chaotic. My process traverses these two extremes. I make wall hangings from renovated opshop clothing - these are seeped in the tradition of fabric work. For thousands of generations, this art has clothed us and contained our precious things. Fabrics come from plants and animals who we once shared this earth with in an elegant balance. We glean knowledge from historical pieces whilst the words of so many untold stories that were shared over the stitches are lost. This legacy is an honour to embody. The soft, the subtle, the shared. Fashion and fabric is now one of the biggest and most pointless polluters of our time. I choose to unite the lineage of our fabric traditions with a protest of our throw away attitudes to create these works.
I employ another process, who couldn’t be more opposite. Digital collages are made from the rescued images found in coffee table landscape books. I then scan them whilst moving the images. This warps and weaves them together to formulate bizarre and jilty otherworldly landscapes. They seem so alien, so out of this world, so beyond comprehension. Yet they intimately are of this one, incredible World. I hope they transport you to the edge of your understanding. That they make you uncomfortable and curious. In awe and questioning. These are but two of the voices, heard from the earth that I seek to speak.
Oh I am so excited. I wish to weave life back into our lives. I wish to pursue and promote potential, love, connection, abundance, grace, creativity, humility, joy and all that amazing yesness that is the actual, real baseline of this life. I wish to do it in a way where space is offered to you all to be exactly who your highest self calls you to be.