Watermark
Keith Tallett | Hana Yoshihata
September 9 - November 5, 2021
CLOSING OPEN HOUSE
Saturday, November 6th | 10 AM - 2 PM
Free & open to the public with 15 min private viewing appointments, pre-registration is required
Email ieh@ategallery.com to book your visit today
@ategallery
Watermark features work by Hawaiʻi Island artists Tallett and Yoshihata, offering visual meditations on water, an abundant, yet increasingly precious resource. Working in a variety of mediums, the artists examine the interconnectivity between water, the natural world, and human experience, deeply connected to place.
Working from the most isolated, populated landmass on earth, the Hawaiian Islands, like many in Hawaiʻi, Tallett and Yoshihata hold multiple relationships with water in its various forms, from the great, blue continent — the Pacific Ocean, to the snow on Maunakea, which is wahi kapu (sacred place), one of the most sacred places for Native Hawaiians. Tallett and Yoshihata offer thoughtful reflections on the multiplicity of relationships humans hold with water in its various forms, rooted in place, Hawaiʻi Island, where both artists are from.
Sharing work in a variety of mediums, Tallett presents three bodies of work highlighting interconnected themes that all center on Mauankea. Paintings Mauna Kea Snowchains (All Access I & All Access II), from his Flying Hawaiians series, composed of mixed media with epoxy resin on wood, reference in medium the finest surfboard crafting techniques, but contextually are centered in dialogue with Maunakea. With linear patterns reminiscent of kapa watermark (Hawaiian barkcloth) patterns, upon closer inspection these marks are actually made by various tire patterns, with Tallett sharing an amalgam of inspiration for this ongoing series, from the Ku Kia’i Mauna (protectors) who chained themselves to the cattle guard, protecting Maunakea from further development, to offering space for reflection on land, ownership, and indigenous rights. He aptly notes the power dynamics of accessibility to Maunakea, sharing, “the road tied the movement to the mountain...who has access, who does not have access.” Working in shiny, enamel paint and polished surfboard materials, the tire-tread patterns reference the emphasis on car culture as a means for identity in contemporary Hawaiʻi, but also are an ode to Polynesian tattoo design, which historically were a way to share genealogy and identity.
Revisiting work and a performance from 2014, which he presented at the 2015 Global Asia/Pacific Art Exchange (GAX) program conference as part of a panel session titled "Agree or Disagree: There Is Such a Thing as a Hawai'i Sense of Place,” Tallett shows two photographs from his Mauna Kea Snowball Project, along with a foam, epoxy and resin snowball sculpture on a tire track. At a quick glance the photographs and sculpture are whimsical and playful, capturing the sheer joy of a very special snow day atop of the mauna, free and open to all a few times a year. However, deeper meaning abounds, offering thoughtful reflection on the ongoing commodification of Native Hawaiian culture and resources, with Tallet, who grew up in Hilo and going to Maunakea with family and friends on the few, special snow days each year, shares that his “hope with this work is to create a dialogue that asks ‘who controls our resources, who decides to commodify them, how they are sold and who is selling them?’ These are interesting questions to me, because it's usually not as black and white as you might think, with different opinions within our own culture about restriction to accessing cultural sites, land rights and land usage.”
Yoshihata is both an artist and a voyager through her work with the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS), where she served as a crew member on the Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia throughout Hawaiʻi and abroad. This experience continues to serve as her greatest inspiration.
Exhibiting new works debuting in Watermark for the first time in a variety of sizes from her Pūlawa series, she incorporates ocean water from Ka Piko o Wākea/Equator, Ka Lae with gouache and acrylic pigments that are reminiscent of the heavens at night, free from any human made light pollution and these same night skies that guided Yoshihata on the Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia using Polynesian voyaging techniques that rely on the stars as a navigational tool.
Reflecting on returning home to Hawaiʻi Island in 2017 through her work as a voyager with PVS is the centering inspiration point for her Pūlawa series. Yoshihata shares that the morning she reached land was cloudy and gray; from the water, unbeknownst to her and her fellow voyagers, they were approaching Hawaiʻi Island and Maunakea, which was shrouded in mist and clouds, before being revealed. Combing ocean water with more conventional painterly materials, gouache and acrylic, Yoshihata’s mystical works on paper offer dream, fantastical starscapes, which have a spiritual, otherworldly quality, yet as she shares, are quite highlighting the “literal marks created by and left behind from water.”
Viewing Watermark
Due to the Covid-19 surge, all visits are strictly by appointment and can be done in-person for groups of three people max or via Zoom. To book a private visit please email: ieh@ategallery.com
Watermark
Keith Tallett | Hana Yoshihata
September 15 - November 12, 2021
Vaccinated and negative covid tests welcome
For more info + schedule a visit: email contact@ategallery.com
Above the Equator
184 Kamehameha Ave, Suite 190A
Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720
@ategallery
Photography by Dino Morrow
The Artists
Keith Tallett
Keith Tallett is a mixed media artist who was born and raised in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. He is also a second generation surfboard shaper and tattoo practitioner of traditional Polynesian patterns. The process of making art for him becomes a way of creating dialogue between his cultural knowledge and practices, and his investigations as a contemporary artist. Keith has an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. He has exhibited at such venues as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles, and Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York. His professional experience includes lecturing at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Art Department from 2004 – 2011 as well as being a founding member of AGGROculture, a Hawaiʻi-based art collective. Keith was included in the 2011 Artists of Hawaiʻi exhibition at the Honolulu Museum of Art where he received the Jean Charlot Foundation Award for Excellence. He was also awarded a 2011 Cultural Apprenticeship Grant through the Folk Art Program at Hawaiʻi State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, and was nationally recognized when he received a 2013 Joan Mitchell Foundation Sculptor and Painter Grant. Tallett also creates work collaboratively with artist Sally Lundburg under the name Les Filter Feeders. The duo participated in the 2014 Present Project International residency in Oʻahu, as the only invited artists from Hawaiʻi. Other exhibitions include The Rat and The Octopus at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center’s Schaefer International Gallery (2016), The Middle of Now | Here – The Honolulu Biennial 2017 and Tropical Disturbance at The Luggage Store in San Francisco (2018). See more of Keith’s work at keithtallett.com and lesfilterfeeders.com
Hana Yoshihata
Hana Yoshihata, born in Kealakekua on Hawaiʻi Island, collaborates with coastal and deep sea water to create paintings that evoke and honor the ocean, cosmos, and canoe voyaging culture throughout the Pacific. Her experiences voyaging on traditional Polynesain canoes Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia throughout Hawaiʻi and abroad serve as the greatest inspiration for her work. By incorporating waters gathered from around the world, Hana creates paintings that are both conceptually and materially tied to voyaging, while exploring our intrinsic human connections to the sky, sea, and earth. Since completing a BFA with distinction at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2016, she has exhibited a solo show with the Honolulu Museum of Art, has multiple pieces in the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum’s Art in Public Places collection, and continues to voyage.
Working on sheets of heavy watercolor paper placed flat on the floor, mixtures of ocean waters, acrylic pigments and ink are allowed to flow, mix and dry freely across the surface. This process welcomes the elemental influence of the ocean by changing and eroding pigments, alluding to its power in transforming larger environments and landscapes, and resulting in pieces that are ultimately shaped by the sea.