DION HITCHINGS

Interaction and cultural/ historical aspects and discuss how they relate to Dion Hitchings’ Work:


Dion Hitchings has a very unique way of making art. I will be discussing cultural and interaction aspects of His works.
One of the first points that Hitchings made about his artwork that stoodout to me was “What is my artwork without my audience?” and “Can my art be fully a piece of art without my audience?” -
this was something very cruicial, as interaction has been a big part of the works He has done.

The first work I found very interesting was “Te wao nui a tane”: This work had very strong historical aspects, and was also very interesting in the way it relates to the audience.




This work was part of the pivotal period of Dion’s life, that strated to ‘frame his art career’. Hitching stated this was the first point were he took on the idea of interaction. This is interesting because as the viewer, we look at a ‘pile of sticks’ like this and by no means expect anything to happen.
When the viewer walks into (he places them in a doorway) this art space a trigger is censored which is in the middle of the roof, which creates these to turn at 1rpm (very slowly) and a ‘funny noise’ is created, kind of scaring the viewer. They are very confronting to the viewer as they are bigger than the human body.

There is very much cultural inspiration behind the use of ‘weeping willow’ as the materials. Back when New Zealand was colonized the Maori would move pegs that the ‘farmers’ used to make their territory. Because of this the farmers (from England or wherever) decided to bring these (non-native) trees into NZ and plant them along their boundaries so they could not be moved by the Maori’s. These trees grew like weeds, soaking up the waterways and becoming ecological hazards. Hitchings’ was playing on a bit of a pun for the Maori with this idea. He was also interested in having the idea of ecology, a pun for Maori, “god of the forest, can the god of the forest be the god of a colonized tree?”

Hitching states that ‘art exists in a continuum’- briefly going over the modernism movement and stating that ‘post modernism is influenced by modernist art’ and it also questions modernism. That looking back on history we can pick things out of it that we enjoy and ‘pull them out for our practise’. This aspect is also a big part of his work, being part of the ‘post-modernist’ era has benefitted Him, he says, being ‘half Chinese and half Maori’, his practice suits post-modernism because He draws on all these things, the ‘minority voices’ and dis-empowers the ‘modernist movement’.

Another interesting art work was the work in the Auckland Art gallery in 1999 – this work was positioned in the window, sitting on the ‘outside of art gallery’. It was interesting for interaction as the ‘viewer’ didn’t have to even enter the gallery to engage with it. “it was positioned ‘between spaces’ – between the inside and outside that is.
Space between the inside and the outside… In this project he worked with a friend Lylod Brown, who placed the motion sensor on the outside of the window , and when the viewer walked infront of it , it triggered something and cause smoke to come up, and lights to come on and change, this would create a bit of a fright in the viewer, which is a really cool part of the ‘viewing experience’ as for every viewer the ‘interaction’ would be completely unique.



Another interesting work is the work at Civic square in Manukau, this is based on idea of the mountain in Tahiti, which is a sacred mountain. He states when we ‘colonize a space, you bring with it your memories’. This was culturally unique to the space it is in because he drew on the fact that, the largest numbers of Polynesian people live in Manukau. He used granite rocks from Asia, which relates to his ‘audience’ also the polualation of asians is growing, so could make them ‘feel at home’ and bring memories from home.

Another point I liked that Hitchings’ made was that he is only able to do all these works because of how he communicates with the people he works with. He has many friends that help him out e.g, spray painters, welders, engineers etc.
I really enjoyed learning about the depth both culturally and historically, and also the way Hitchings’ work intereacts with the viewer.