Heidi Brickell

PAKANGA FOR THE LOSTGIRL

8 March - 28 April 2023

The Engine Room in partnership with KAUKAU are pleased to present PAKANGA FOR THE LOSTGIRL by Heidi Brickell (Te Hika o Papauma, Rangitāne, Ngāi Tara, Rongomaiwahine, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Pākehā), an immersive exhibition that explores layers of language and the windows and veils to the hinengaro that it renders.

The exhibition threads together a variety of media: painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation, exploring how the internal space of the hinengaro might be navigated, and how it finds its way within its own web of relations. A pakanga is a battle, and ‘lostgirl’, a literal translation of hinengaro, which refers to our seat of emotions, or some portion of our gut. A word that has travelled and shape- shifted across the Pacific, like seed expressing different elements of the whakapapa it carries within the unique soil of each motu where it landed.

This exhibition was initiated and developed by the artist with Cameron Ah Loo-Matamua, curator at St Paul St Gallery in Tāmaki Mākaurau in May 2022. It was reconfigured for The Physics Room in Ōtautahi with curator Abby Cunnane in August 2022. An entity of modular parts, this third iteration of PAKANGA FOR THE LOSTGIRL reforms in response to the architectural features of The Engine Room. and features Maringi Toa, composed by Riki Gooch (Ngāti Wai, Patuharakeke, Ngāti Māhanga Hourua) as a takoha to the project, echoing off the walls.

Image: Heidi Brickell, PAKANGA FOR THE LOSTGIRL (detail), 2021. Photo by Mitchell McGrath