Polynesian navigators

'I interpreted my brief to somehow emphasise and link the navigational skills of Christopher Colombus and the Polynesian sailors. Exploring the great sailing adventurers who explored new seas, new lands, and the unknown. My brief developed as three major bodies of work. The pilot pots represented the Spanish sailors - large dominating forms, strange to look at, like the images seen by native inhabitants the first time they saw such vessels. The Pilots were to be big and challenging, and their decoration suggested speed, fast flowing water and gas heat. The first Pilot weighed in at 45 kilos, the second at 61 kilos. They required supreme concentration and effort in handling. I made nine large Eels representing the great Polynesian voyaging canoes, a tribute to their courage, dreams and skills as navigators. I understand young eels go off to sea on unknown adventures - they may have been the pathfinders for the ancient Polynesian voyagers. The Eels began their lives as 160mm pipe extrusions at the Bishopdale Brick and Tile potteries in Nelson. The day after they were extruded, I cut and bent them to create the Eels. They took months to dry slowly. To say something of the land of New Zealand, I chose to make large boulders, small rocks and pebbles out of clay - and then added five tuataras and a running skink. Since that time I have been fascinated by eels and tuataras: how they look, and their place in nature and mythology. They can be the essence of our history and the future of life in the Pacific.' Steve Fullmer Wellington, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Treasures of the Underworld exhibition, 1992, Seville, Spain. New Zealand touring exhibition 1993. cat no 11, p 21.