Jasmine Togo-Brisby's exhibition Can you see us now? opens at Hastings Art Gallery this month. Pictured is part of her 2023 work, Abyss. Photo / Fremantle Art Centre
Jasmine Togo-Brisby's exhibition Can you see us now? opens at Hastings Art Gallery this month. Pictured is part of her 2023 work, Abyss. Photo / Fremantle Art Centre
Opinion by Sophie Davis
OPINION
This week we’re looking forward to opening two new exhibitions at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery.
Our team is busy behind the scenes preparing “Can you see us now?”, a major sculptural installation by Brisbane-based contemporary artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby, and “Foundations & Additions: Plans for the Heretaunga 100 block”, which gathers hand-drawn architectural plans for some of the Deco buildings in central Hastings.
As a South Sea Islander of Ni-Vanuatu ancestry, Togo-Brisby’s art practice sheds light on the history of South Sea Islanders, the descendants of Pacific Islanders who were taken to Australia to work on plantations between 1847 and 1903.
Working with our gallery staff, she has created a striking and immersive experience in our main gallery, presented in a darkened room lit only by hovering chandeliers.
The exhibition builds on two recurring images the artist reclaims across her practice: the ship; and decorative Wunderlich pressed-tin ceilings, which are seen in many Deco heritage buildings in Heretaunga Hastings.
Togo-Brisby, who previously lived and worked in New Zealand for many years, has created her new work from plaster-cast replica tamtam drums – a type of wooden slit drum used for communication and ceremonies in the islands of Vanuatu.
Most of the 200 or so casts were made by the artist on-site at Hastings Art Gallery over two weeks last year, using silicone moulds, with the help of fellow artist Maioha Kara.
These plaster forms will be arranged on the gallery’s floor to form a skeletal ship, resembling an excavation of sorts.
Can you see us now? continues a series of connected work by Togo-Brisby exploring the ship as an image of empathy and resistance across time, space, and genealogies – a vessel for South Sea identity and the connected journeys of many.
The installation will also appear like an ornate ceiling, and behind this is a personal connection to the Sydney-based Wunderlich family.
The Wunderlichs, once the largest provider of pressed-tin ceilings to Aotearoa New Zealand, acquired the artist’s great-great-grandparents after they were abducted in Vanuatu and enslaved as domestic servants.
The artist has explored this history in previous works such as Open City (In suspension), 2022, at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
On Saturday, March 15, at 11am the gallery will host a discussion between Togo-Brisby and Imelda Miller of Queensland Art Museum, who will unpack this artwork together and discuss the communities and histories it activates.
Original hand-coloured plans and specifications from 1933 for the Hannah’s building at 111 Heretaunga St, Hastings.
In the gallery’s Foyer Gallery, Foundations and Additions presents a sample of the original architectural features and evolution of the Heretaunga streetscape, bringing together hand-drawn plans for a cluster of Art Deco buildings in central Hastings.
Many of the plans are striking and showcase decorative as well as structural features of these buildings. Developed with my Hastings District Council colleagues Charlie Ropitini and Miranda Welch, this exhibition creates a dialogue between heritage ornamentation and the contemporary work in the gallery while taking a closer look at the built environment we see every day.
