Featuring:
- Lonnie Hutchinson
- Craig McIntosh
- Shaun Waugh
- Areta Wilkinson

This exhibition brings together four artists that use reduction, simplification of form, and repetition in their practice, both physically and conceptually, to create meaning. In chemistry, reduction refers to a reaction in which the electrons within an atom increase, and in cooking, it causes the flavour to intensify. By reducing the elements that they work with, these artists are synthesizing an idea to its core elements and therefore deepening its meaning. In his postcard-carved landscapes, Craig Mcintosh questions the legitimacy, ethics, and history of land ownership. Lonnie Hutchison’s repeated motifs, cut-outs, and use of negative space examine the languages, medicine, and mark-making of her tūpuna (ancestors). Shaun Waugh removes information from box lids, but by replacing this loss with carefully colour-matched prints he highlights the fluidity of information. The 36 pendants in Areta Wilkinson’s Ka Taka Te Wā – Time Passed represents the passing of time during the first COVID-19 lockdown, as simple beaten ovals that hold days, years, and millennia of wisdom. In these artworks, absence is as powerful as presence in creating content and meaning. In reducing, subtracting, or simplifying materials their work leaves space for knowledge.

Lonnie Hutchinson (Ngāti Kuri, Ngāi Tahu, Samoan, Scottish, English, b.1963), Hibiscus Cave, 2021, Aluminum, paint

Bird in Space is proudly supported by Jarden.