When I was young - Kua hua te marama

Quest Art Space
58 Bank Street, Whangārei, Aotearoa | New Zealand
curated by Sonja van Kerkhoff

27 September - 2 November 2024
open: Mondays - Fridays: 8am-5pm, Sat & Sun: 9am-4pm
Gallery contact: Lenny at creativenorthland.com

We can look at time as a thing of the past or as cycles of completions.
Artists respond in hundreds of ways to these themes. Opening performances


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click to view or download a print version, 500 dpi, 7.3 mb of this poster

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Left to right: Tupuānuku*X* pastel crayon, pencil, ink on paper, by Piet Nieuwland.
Tupuānuku, one of the Matariki star cluster, is associated with plants harvested from the soil.
Te Pō Nui (The great night), Te Pō Roa (The long night), Te Pō Tangotango (The intense dark night),
digital photographs on 3mm thick aluminum, 40 x 57 cm each, by Ashleigh Zimmerman.
These titles refer to same phrases in the Māori creation story starting with existence before existence.
Tupuānuku pastel crayon, pencil, ink by Piet Nieuwland.
As a child poem on a3 by Piet Nieuwland.
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Photo: Lenny Murupaenga, Creative Northland Curator

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Tracking down the European Bison, Poland 1993 / 2015
by Natascha J. A. Rodenburg


Ashleigh Zimmerman, Whangārei, Northland | Te Tai Tokerau

Astrid Moors, Rotterdam, The Netherlands astridmoors.nl

Bev Goodwin, Tāmaki-makau-rau brickbaysculpture.co.nz/bev-goodwin

Carmen Bolanos Reekers, Vriezenveen, The Netherlands (El Salvador)

Chris Schreuder, Whangārei, Northland | Te Tai Tokerau facebook.com/chris.schreuder

Cle Tukuitonga, Ōtangaroa, The Far North, Te Tai Tokerau

Connie Davis, Northland, Te Tai Tokerau

Dana LaMonda The Hague, The Netherlands danalamonda.com

Denise Corden, The Far North, Te Tai Tokerau

Edie Chappell, Whakapirau, Northland | Te Tai Tokerau facebook.com/ediechappellartist

Jason Povey, Whangārei

Jocelyn Friis, Mangawhai jocelynfriisart.com

Jeff Thomson, Helensville jeffthomson.co.nz

Jessy Rahman, The Hague, The Netherlands (Suriname) thehagueartists.nl

Kat Aucamp Tāmaki-makau-rau / Northland | Te Tai Tokerau instagram.com/notes_on_aucamp

Kristine Amato Whangārei, Northland | Te Tai Tokerau

Liam Astbury Whangārei (Dargaville), Northland | Te Tai Tokerau

Phil Dadson, Tāmaki-makau-rau thearts.co.nz

Piet Nieuwland, Whangārei, Northland | Te Tai Tokerau pietnieuwland.com

Pietertje van Splunter, The Hague, The Netherlands pietertje.net

Rob Carter, Whangārei, Northland | Te Tai Tokerau

Maya, The Hague, The Netherlands (Indonesia)

Maria Stanculescu, The Hague, The Netherlands

Michiel Teeuw, Groningen, The Netherlands michielteeuw.com

Murray Silverstone, Helensville

Natascha J. A. Rodenburg, The Netherlands natascharodenburg.com

Rudi Struik, Leiden, The Netherlands rudi-struik.com

Sen McGlinn, Kawakawa, Northland | Te Tai Tokerau sculpturebysen.wordpress.com

Sonja van Kerkhoff, Kawakawa, Te Tai Tokerau / The Hague, The Netherlands sonjavank.com

Sophia Dadson, Tāmaki-makau-rau

Stephen Suess, Kohukohu, Te Tai Tokerau

Sue Vincent Hill, Wellsford

Susanne Khouri, Waipu / Tāmaki-makau-rau susannekhouri.co.nz

Suzanne White, Kaitaia area, The Far North

Ursula Christel, Warkworth (South Africa) ursulachristel.com

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Left to right: Two works, inks on paper, 2024 by Phil Dadson. he kākano photographic print on a4 by Cle Tukuitonga. I AM A SEED. School holiday visit to the Auckland Museum. White lettering represents the breath of air shared between 12yr old nephew and ancestor as they hongi. White outlines represent the mauri (life force). Double self-portrait digital print on a5 by Maya The Hague, The Netherlands
The Vortex of fallen leaves digital print on a4 by Sonja van Kerkhoff
Tracking down the European Bison, Poland, 2 works out of a series of eleven, pencil rubbings, photograph, inks, text by Natascha J. A. Rodenburg
Buzzy Beehive, 3 colour Risograph Print, A3, by Jason Povey.
For the trees, inks, acrylics & shellac on canvas, by Denise Corden
Boom (Tree), acrylic and card on hardboard, 10 x 15 cm by Pietertje van Splunter
Australian Fires, framed photograph by Liam Astbury
Mantel, Inks, acrylics, fabric & shellac on canvas by Denise Corden
Mending Time, 2024, acrylic, charcoal, spray paint, shellac, framed canvas construction, antique coat hanger by Ursula Christel. A reworked art piece from 2003. Exploring themes of slippage and repair, loss and restoration.
Papa René in Retrospect, two elements from the 'Being on the Way' project by Dana LaMonda.

Tracking down the European Bison, Poland, a series of eleven, pencil rubbings, photograph, inks, text by Natascha J. A. Rodenburg
The pencil rubbings of the bark of the trees in the photographs in the Białowieża Forest in Poland.

The ink lines symbolize her 1993 journey through this forest by bicycle from Warsaw which was a three day cycle ride away in the only rainforest in Europe with 1/7th in Poland and 6/7th of this in Belarus. The photographs and rubbings were made in 1993 during her quest to find the European Bison. At that time this was the only place left where they were living wild in Europe. She first saw these bison in captivity and then in the middle of a track in the distance. As a teenager she sang and danced in a Polish cultural group in Heerlen, a city in the south of the Netherlands where there was a large community of migrants working in the mines. From this she knew of the bison in this forest. She started this work in 1993 and 22 years later, while in Northland, NZ, in 2015, completed this work.


Opening, 1 pm, 28 September 2024:

Performance: Transition Zones,

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Still: filmed by Rob Carter. Transition Zones, 20 min performance.

A collaborative performance, score and documentation

Concept: Michiel Teeuw, Sonja van Kerkhoff, Ursula Christel, Sue Vincent Hill

Photography: Michiel Teeuw (Schiermonnikoog shoreline, The Netherlands featuring the coastal crustose lichen, Caloplaca marina), Sonja van Kerkhoff (Kawakawa, Aotearoa, New Zealand)

Score arrangement: Sue Vincent Hill and Sonja van Kerkhoff

Performance on 28 Sept: Sue Vincent Hill, Ursula Christel, Piet Nieuwland, Lisa Young and Sonja van Kerkhoff with audience participation on stones

Video of performance, soundscape and score: link to be added here in October

A score is formed from:
Photographs by Dutch-based artist Michiel Teeuw taken during a walk on the shore of the island Schiermonnikoog (part of the Wadden area which is currently used for extracting gas).
And photographs of trespassing fill dumped above and into a wetland in suburban Kawakawa (Oct/Nov 2022) by a new neighbour. The saga of polluting the edges of a Northland wetland, continues: See: sonjavank.com/dump

This collaborative work responds to the theme of Cycles of Time, and reflects on a time when lichen and wetlands were not widely recognized as vital ecological transition zones.

Michiel Teeuw, The Netherlands, Ursula Christel, Sue Vincent Hill, Sonja van Kerkhoff, Aotearoa | New Zealand
michielteeuw.nl | www.ursulachristel.com | www.sonjavank.com



Followed by:

a poem by Piet Nieuwland and Pete Seegar's song, Inch by inch sung by Sue Vincent Hill, and a speed tour

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Left to Right: Planet B, 4 colour Risograph print by Jason Povey; BOI Racer, Be Sweet, wood, acrylic, gems, Hot wheels, by Kat Aucamp; Dissipation / the Unveiling of Experience, "After all, it is in the space between veiling and unveiling that we reveal ourselves." - Caroline Levine, found frame, upcycled carved wood, repurposed bridal lace, Japanese handmade paper, scrim, shellac, reworked mixed-media acrylic painting on canvas fragments by Ursula Christel;
Untitled print created in the Dali AI programme with the instruction, a Rousseau-like setting for a spaceship by Stephen Suess; Ceramic and glazed object by Rob Carter.

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Detail: Transition Zones, 20 min performance.
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Detail:Transition Zones, performance, score, and documentation by Michiel Teeuw, Sonja van Kerkhoff, Ursula Christel and Sue Vincent Hill.

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Image created in the Dali AI programme with the instruction, a spaceship in a Rousseau forest by Stephen Suess.
Detail of Shorelines, 2024, text and design based on the lichen, Caloplaca marina by Michiel Teeuw

Transition Zones documentation by Michel Teeuw (Schiermonnikoog shoreline, The Netherlands featuring the coastal crustose lichen, Caloplaca marina) and Sonja van Kerkhoff (Kawakawa, Aotearoa, New Zealand of unpermited fill dumped into a wetland)

Michiel Teeuw provided imagery of thriving coastal ecosystems in the Netherlands with instructions to create a score. New Zealand-based Ursula Christel, Sue Vincent Hill and Sonja van Kerkhoff, developed this into a suite of images, a performance and a video.

This collaborative work combines universal and abstract references to the intricacies of ecosystems with specifics about nurturing and destruction, about life and death, for an ecological transition zone upstream of a wetland beside the Kawakawa Waiomio River. The death and destruction result from large quantities of spoil dumped by a property developer into and above the wetland.

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Planet B, 4 colour Risograph print by Jason Povey

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BOI Racer, Be Sweet, wood, acrylic, gems, Hot wheels, by Kat Aucamp   

Shorelines, 2024, are pages of text and design based on the lichen, Caloplaca marina by Michiel Teeuw

The texts, excerpts of an artistic research project, are fragments by authors from Suriname & Aruba reference the shore/coast/riverbank. The authors of these texts write both in Dutch (the colonizing language) as well as Papiamentu/o, Sranantongo and Sarnámi Hindustáni. In an effort to circulate these texts, Teeuw included their own English translations - as a pragmatic service rather than as a literary work.






Curated by Sonja + others   Sonja's c.v.