Geographical Positioning System - new paintings by Pippa Sanderson Idiom Studio
4 June 5 July 2003
TeWhanganui-a-tara is the Maori name for Wellington, and also for the hill overlooking the settlement of Waimarama in
Hawkes Bay. The hill features in the paintings stolen from Wellington artist Pippa Sanderson's exhibition 'Returning in
Disguise' at the Manawatu Art Gallery last year.
Wellington is also the name of a village in the English county of Shropshire, where Pippa's Victorian ancestors were
born, married, and migrated to New Zealand.
In her latest exhibition, ŒGeographical Positioning System¹, Pippa explores how the ghosts of her Pakeha ancestors made
their presence felt in the land, in the architectural and botanical traces of England, and in the European placenames
which overlaid the Maori names. In these landscapes, based on coastal Wellington, the craggy coastal crannies are
populated by cousins to the bird-masked numinos from Pippa's Hawkes Bay paintings. She says, ³Their relationship to the
environment mirrors the way unconscious thoughts emerge and recede from language².