Gleanings from the workshop of the unknown - timeline

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

Robin White worked in New Zealand as a painter and printmaker until she relocated to the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati in 1982. The move had a significant impact on her art practice. After a fire destroyed her home and studio she began using locally available materials and embracing a more collaborative approach to art-making: ‘When you’re on an island, you can’t just pop down to the local art shop and replenish your stock of art materials. You have to think laterally.’1

White started working with tapa (bark cloth) in 2000. In this work, hieroglyphs, wave upon wave of repeating patterns on tapa and lines from a poem by Pablo Neruda form her response to the island of Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island), which she visited in 2011 with a group of artists in support of a proposed ocean sanctuary. The repeating pyramid shapes that dominate the work create a striking pattern which, according to the artist, represents the constant and unforgiving presence of the waves breaking along Rapa Nui’s coastline.

The symbols along the top are a pictorial timeline of Rapa Nui’s history — its settlement, colonial occupations and the impact of missionaries and settlers on island life. Their hieroglyphic form is a direct reference to rongorongo glyphs, an early form of written communication found in Rapa Nui. White has, however, created her own symbols. Some are instantly recognisable: anchors, the cross and the golden fleece. Others relate to now extinct native birds, while the hands with elongated fingers are inspired by one of the island’s famous moai (stone statues).
The title of White’s work incorporates a passage from Pablo Neruda’s poem ‘Los hombres IX’ (‘The men IX’), written in response to his own visit to Rapa Nui in 1971:

here on Easter Island where everything is altar, where everything is a workshop of the unknown,
the woman suckles her newborn
child on the same steps on which
her gods tread.2

Sarah Farrar

 1 Robin White, ‘Art to art: Robin White artist talk’, Off the Wall, Arts Te Papa, 1 April 2013, http://arts.tepapa.govt.nz/off-the-wall/5502/art-to-art-robin-white-artist-talk (accessed 8 March 2017).

2 ‘Los hombres IX’ (English translation), in Pablo Neruda, La rosa separada: Tiare haka topa he rosa: Pablo Neruda Rapanui, Origo Ediciones, Santiago, 2011.