Pauline Rhodes

Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1937

Blue Mind Sampler

  • 2020
  • Plywood, rust, steel, wool, cloth, glass, driftwood, kelp, tororaro
  • Gift of the artist, 2021. Dedicated to J.M.R.
  • 2021/075.1-26

Over several decades, Pauline Rhodes has built up a flexible toolbox of natural and artificial materials, gathering them from the hills and beaches around Horomaka Banks Peninsula as well as salvage yards and industrial sites. She sometimes transforms these items using organic processes, such as rusting iron with seawater. Rhodes returns regularly to her store of objects, reconstructing them in different combinations for new environments and contexts. Many of the components used here were part of the larger 2020 project Blue Mind, a sculptural meditation on the colour of the ocean, the sky, and our own ‘blue planet’ when viewed from space. Here, Rhodes responds to the space and the energies of other works; retaining a sense of fluidity and impermanence and finding connections in colour, line and movement.

(Die Cuts and Derivations, 11 March – 2 July 2023)

Exhibition History