Found Footage (stills)
2006-7
Super 8 transferred to digital video
courtesy of the artist and Anna Miles Gallery, Auckland

SRIWHANA SPONG New Zealand
ARTSPACE

I was never there on the mountains of infinite bliss in Rishikesh. I was not there for George’s birthday where the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi handed him an upside down plastic globe and declared “this is the world and it needs changing”. I wasn’t present when Harrison let it slip that his one word mantra appears in I Am the Walrus, and I certainly wasn’t there for that group photo. “Now come on everybody. Cosmic smiles…. and all into the lens.” But I’ve seen the photos and I imagine the rest. The sharp waft of marigolds mixed with dry earth, the screech of monkeys exalting high in the trees, and somewhere the strains of someone strumming Dear Prudence. I read about these histories, I see the faded images, and my mind plays in the gaps. It is in these gaps where all the subjective memories, and mini narratives float. The powerful small stories that make messy, those official documentations of past events. In the words of Mr L Cohen, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Sriwhana Spong plays with these cracks, creating a space in between the supposed facts, the faded photographs. It’s a space where memories, impressions and ideas collide to create work with one foot in this world and one foot somewhere else, a somewhere not found on any unfurled map. As much as Spong attempts to create a space for herself, claim some sense of belonging to her estranged Balinese culture, the camera always sits fiercely in-between. Drawing a line with a lens and tripod, Spong deliberately creates an eternal ‘check’. There is push and pull, a little fear and trembling, but no Kierkegaard wild leap over the border just yet. One can’t be too careful when finding a road through the puss of dominant consumer culture and into the hazy mountains of infinite bliss. In the words of Sir McCartney circa 1968, “I get a bit lost in the upper reaches of it all.”

A. Cooper

Background

Of Balinese and European heritage Sriwhana Spong, was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1979 where she continues to live and work. Solo exhibitions include C'est La Vie ma Cherie, Anna Miles Gallery, Auckland, 2003; Muttnik, Anna Miles Gallery, 2005; and Candlestick Park, Anna Miles Gallery, 2006. She received the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award, Waikato Museum of Art and History, Hamilton, 2005, for her video work Nightfall. Recent group exhibitions include The Greenhouse, Frankfurter Welle, 2004; ACP Video Show, Scott Donovan Gallery, Sydney, 2004; Break Shift, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, 2004; World Famous in New Zealand, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, 2005; Cultural Futures, ST PAUL ST, Auckland, 2005; An Unlikely Return to the Legend of Origins, Sparwasser HQ, Berlin, 2006; Local Transit, ARTSPACE, Auckland, 2006; 2x2 Contemporary Projects, City Gallery, Wellington, 2006; Happy Believers: Werkleitz Biennale, Halle, 2006; A Tale of Two Cities: Busan-Seoul / Seoul-Busan, Busan Biennial, 2006; and don't misbehave!: SCAPE 2006 Biennial of Art in Public Space, Christchurch. Spong's work is profiled by Virginia Were, in "When night falls..." Art News New Zealand, Summer 2005 and Laura Preston's essay in the don't misbehave! catalogue.