The inherent truth in paradox - Narrative

Acrylic and pastel on newspaper.

When I was a baby my mother took me to stay with my great-grandparents at Matakana Island. Their wallpaper was newsprint and their floor was dirt, which should never be mistaken for dirty.

Last year while living with my grandparents I began putting new living into their house. As they are very conservation orientated, living on an island, I had to create my art on potential rubbish... it made them happy because to them that is progressive.

I painted their old newspaper and I stapled it to the walls and made new wallpaper. My grandmother would joke to visitors, did they want any fish. I could not stop the fish from coming out.

Then the headlines on the newspaper started to interest me, they were often negative so I moved the paint to cover and reveal new headlines. I call it prophecy because I can always find a new message in the headlines. Afterwards, when I read the entire work, something new has been given to me. I say I am subverting the news, but actually, I am subverting my belief system.

In this gallery, they become a metaphor for creation, the womb that nurtures the ideas. Ideas are the DNA of existence, and the womb is the incubator for transition from idea to reality. These paintings are the entry to my womb; you can see the ideas before they are forms. You can see the DNA/blood before it has become a foetus. I found these pictures in my body, and as I understand that time has us at the tip of something that has been evolving forever, I see it as a truth.

In an art gallery, we are all removed from our natural space, and in artificial environments, we become like rubbish because we are not in any way artificial. In an art gallery, the light is not natural, the walls are too white, and my paintings are painted on yesterday’s newspaper that is thrown away.

These paintings are one way to stop this newspaper from being thrown on the fire to be erased, to be rubbish. They are the new that will not stop, just like the rubbish we all make; the place it comes from is infinite. Anyone who buys them is saying that the rubbish is equal with the non-rubbish. That we are all creating rubbish, buying and selling it. That everything on earth has value whether we know it or not.

My art is seeking beyond the walls that house it. It is seeking beyond the universe even. My art is trying to unscramble a lie and find a truth no matter how minuscule, no matter how implausible, no matter how ironic. My art is about the inherent truth in paradox.

Tracey Tawhiao, 2009