Gary Baseman - Memento Moa

In Memento Moa, an exhibition of all new work, Gary Baseman creates a mythical land of hybrid creatures—exploring themes of migration, memory, and mortality.

Playing off the phrase “memento mori” which expresses the inevitability of death, Baseman reimagines Aotearoa New Zealand as a land of rebirth and harmony, bringing back the giant moa from extinction to symbolise those loved and now lost. Baseman pays tribute to his beloved cousin who immigrated to New Zealand from the United States, but whom he never visited at her new home during her lifetime. 

Through iconic characters set in fantastical landscapes, Memento Moa considers family, history, and the idea of home with the artist’s longstanding desire to: “…celebrate the beauty of the bittersweetness of life.” Baseman uses the extinct moa, flightless and endemic to New Zealand, as a metaphor for those loved and lost, and both real and imagined.  His landscapes provide a whimsical, absurdist stage for curious characters in motion, suggesting change and the passage of life.  Migration, the movement of large groups of people or animals from one place to another, takes on multiple meanings when considered instinctual, voluntary, or involuntary.

Born and raised in Hollywood, Baseman is the youngest child of Holocaust survivors who were forced to leave their ancestral homes in Eastern Europe during World War II, Baseman has been compelled to explore through his art, themes of migration and immigration. The artist’s notion of home —belonging, surviving, thriving, remembering, and forgetting — feed into his broader consideration of extinction: the threat to and loss of flora, fauna, and human cultures. Childhood memories have fed this imagery.  Popular culture, such as television, film, books, games, animation, toys, and beloved feline pets, now deceased, live on in fantastical new worlds inspired by Aotearoa. 

On view from 18 March - 11 June 2023.

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