Filling the gap at the White Room
Artist April Stevens with the final exhibition at The White Room. Photo: Ina Holst.
The White Room’s last exhibition for a year features an installation entitled “Tectonics – Filling the Gap” by artist and teacher April Stevens.
April worked from sketches and drawings to create a minimalist wonderworld of lines and unfinished objects, using masking and plastic tape on the walls, floor and ceiling. In full view is a shut door that invites the viewers to turn the door knob, to access the unconsciousness and…fill the gap.
“If people walk in here and feel that there is something missing, then the piece is working and is doing what I wanted – to fill the gap. I do not want to dictate to the viewer what to see in a piece, but for people to contribute in an active way, and the point of the temporary installation is to ask how does our experience live on beyond the realm of memories,” says April.
“Tectonics acknowledges the power of forces shaping our environment and the power behind the power. My works open up the connection between our world and the forces within that, and are a friendly reminder of the forces we have no control over. The space in the White Room works perfectly, as it straddles the domestic and the public, has a perfect size and is free to visit.”
For April, Tectonics explores that relationship between the users and the “domestic fittings and objects” in the gallery context and how these influence one another. The work touches upon our dependence on electricity by hinting at cables presumably leading to lamps, TVs, phones, chargers and computers – a reflection upon the effects of the Christchurch earthquakes. April has 30 family members in Christchurch, all affected each time as their power went off. “The idea’s starting point was the environment, the earthquakes and our relationship with technology drawing on power.”
She was also inspired by the refurbishment of the high school’s computer suite, including the carpet design Tectonics by Cavalier Bremworth. “The carpet was New Zealand-made, produced with the environment in mind and came in a five- to six-colour series all named after volcanoes – it just pushed all my right buttons.”
April’s exhibition can only be viewed at the White Room until the end of this week in its current format, but her 14 previous White Room exhibitions, some held in conjunction with her students, can be viewed on the website <www.lollokiki.co.nz>.
Gallery owner Kas Muller says that Lollokiki needed to “take some time off from having exhibitions at the White Room”, but they will still use the Roving White Room, a few square metres of white canvas over a timber frame which has been used for mobile exhibitions - for example at Bay Art.
This year, however, nobody knows whether the Bay Art can be hosted at the high school hall…due to tectonics, says Kas.
Ina Holst
