Brett Graham & Rachael Rakena
U.F.O.B.
The title of this installation is not hard to decipher. It combines the familiar acronym for those alien visitations from beyond (UFOs) with an acronym for new migrants (FOBs) to form an insult. You FOB. The acronyms are also the basis for the work’s narrative conception. A fleet of ‘unidentified flying objects’ hovers above us. Through their ‘portholes’ we see, on embedded television screens, digital video loops of brown bodies absurdly wrapped in plastic carry-bags, floating surreally underwater. The scenario here is comical, a Pythonesque allegory of migrant ‘arrival’ stories or a sci-fi parody about encountering the ‘other’ with its rampant metaphorisation of the alien and the stranger: giants, gods, cannibals, spirits, savages… SPICs, WOPs and FOBs.
But if the work is about projecting the ‘other’, it is also about imagining the ‘self’ in the Pacific ‘contact zone’. The bags, we might recognize, are the kind typically used by Polynesians as luggage in their frequent air-crossings of the Pacific Ocean—part of the modern business of keeping up connections and relationships in the diaspora of the last few decades. Like cyberspace and digital media—like the Ocean itself once upon a time—the bags are a medium and symbol for this dispersed, expanded and mobile idea of contemporary Pacific identities.
Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena are two artists whose work has recently attempted to complicate the question of indigeneity in the Pacific. They have done this by allegorizing indigenous histories of migration or displacement to reflect conundrums of identification in the present. The artists have also explored the role of new technologies and media as vehicles for cultural expression.
Peter Brunt
This text is an edited excerpt from Peter Brunt’s catalogue text in Charles Merewether (ed.), Zones of Contact: 2006 Biennale of Sydney, Sydney: Biennale of Sydney, 2006, p.122. Reproduced with kind permission of Peter Brunt and the Biennale of Sydney.
Brett Graham artist bio:
Born Auckland, 1967
Ngāti Koroki Kahukura
Lives and works in Auckland
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland
Master of Fine Arts, University of Hawaii
Doctor of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland
Selected solo exhibitions include: 'Aniwaniwa' (with Rachael Rakena), Te Manawa, Palmerston North (2006); 'Kohinga Rua', Waikato Museum of Art and History, Hamilton (2006); 'Kainga Tahi Kainga Rua', Adam Art Gallery, Wellington (2003); ‘Place Tu Stand’, Vavasour Godkin Gallery Auckland (1998).
Selected group exhibitions include: ‘The Arrival’, Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland (2006); 'History Lessons', Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin (2006); 'Zones of Contact 2006 Biennale of Sydney', Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2006).
Rachael Rakena artist bio:
Born Wellington, 1969
Ngāi Tahu, Ngā Puhi
Lives and works in Palmerston North
Master of Fine Arts, Otago Polytechnic School of Art, Dunedin
Postgraduate Diploma in Arts, University of Otago, Dunedin
Bachelor of Arts, University of Otago, Dunedin
Diploma of Fine Arts, Otago Polytechnic School of Art, Dunedin
Selected solo exhibitions include: 'Aniwaniwa' (with Brett Graham), Te Manawa, Palmerston North (2006); 'Taonga Whanau' (with Otene Rakena and Hana Rakena), SOFA Gallery, Christchurch (2005); 'Rerehiko', The Dowse, Lower Hutt (2005); 'Iwidotnz', Marshall Seifert Gallery, Dunedin (2004).
Selected group exhibitions include: 'Zones of Contact 2006 Biennale of Sydney', Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2006); 'Play: Portraiture and Performance in Video Art from Australia and New Zealand', Adam Art Gallery, Wellington and Perth Insitute of Arts, Perth (2005-06); 'Face Value: video portraiture from the Pacific', Ivan Doherty Gallery, Sydney (2005 ‘Te Puawai o Ngai Tahu’, Christchurch City Gallery (2003).
Image credits:
Brett Graham & Rachael Rakena
U.F.O.B. 2006
wood, glass, LCD screens, DVDs
Collection of the artists
Detail of U.F.O.B. 2006
wood, glass, LCD screens, DVDs
Collection of the artists