Defunct Mnemonics

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

Defunct mnemonics is an installation made of one hundred and twenty-six sculptural elements. Based on totemic forms of indefinite origin, each sculpture is made up of a central wooden dowel encased by felt, a favoured material of German artist Joseph Beuys.

Installed ceremonially and appearing as if designed for some unknown ritual, the shamanistic-like sculptures made by Peter Robinson can be defined as memory devices. In a New Zealand context, they can be linked with toko toko or rākau kōrero, carved wooden staffs, symbols of authority and status that are used in whaikōrero or Māori ceremonial speech making. Encoded with data and activated through touch, toko toko and rākau kōrero are prompts for memory recall, most often the recollection of elaborate whakapapa (tribal genealogies and histories).

Created by Robinson in varying sizes and colours, some a solid single colour, others individually coded like DNA using coloured felt circles of grey, black, white and red, each form was assembled by hand by the artist, using the same repetitive process. The process of repetition employed to ‘thread’ each one also emphasises the mnemonic aspect of this installation, repetition being a method used in many cultures for memory retention and recall.

Rather than memory sticks, the late Peter McLeavey, Robinson’s dealer, described these sculptures as ‘spirit sticks’, seeing them as representations of the nui poles connected to religions like Pai Mārire, formed from a mix of Māori and Christian beliefs and associated with the Māori prophetic movements of c.1830–70. McLeavey spoke of the relationship between repetition and religion, comparing Robinson’s threaded rākau to the rosary beads used by Catholics for enumerating prayers.

Robinson’s work is often guided by the formal concerns of the materials he uses. This installation, the monochromatic staffs of Ritual and formation, 2013, his ‘mood sticks’, created for the 2013 Auckland Triennale, which used the colour code of Hippocratic medicine, and Tribe subtribe at the Dowse Art Museum in 2014 highlighted a shift in his practice to these rod forms and felt as a principal material. Reduced, compressed and almost minimalist in their aesthetic, Defunct mnemonics, like this series of installations, creates a sense of presence through its focus, elegance and refinement.

Megan Tamati-Quennell