‘Atholhu’ Exhibition at the Workshop Gallery

The Atholhu exhibition presents work by Cathérine Lommée and Thomas I’Anson.

The first point of departure to create this exhibition was the use of Polynesian navigation guides known as stick charts. These objects traditionally made from curved and straight midribs of coconut fronds representing the winds, wave patterns and ocean swells between two or more islands reflect in both artists’ practices, the relationship between object and mental image. Studied and internalized these charts never left land; serving as a guide, not as a map – an object to crystallize schemata in the mind’s eye.

Atholhu, the exhibition’s title, comes from the etymological root for the word ‘atoll’; the coral structures formed around an extinct volcanic island that grow upward over thousands of years at the same rate its island base falls beneath the sea. The process of autopoiesis causing these ring-like islands to develop reflects the concerns and processes of both of the artists – a mode of growth which occurs in response to shifting frameworks.