Deborah Crowe and Filipe Tohi

In the lecture with Deborah Crowe and our visit to the Mangere art centre with Filipe Tohi we were given a lot of useful information for proceeding a career as a artist as Crowe talks about her process, works, influences, experiments, and the use of building relationships for business then the corm attitude of Tohi as he talked about his influences, works and processes. The two artists both work with sculpture as well as other arts and both relate a lot of there work to weaving.

As Crowe loves things like a grid form, large overwhelming space, and weaving like scaffolding, fabric, the frame structure of a building or bridge. She has had this interest of these things since childhood with her mother being a big influence as she was very good sewer and weaver as she made and repaired there clothes. Through out Crowes career she has incorporated grid, line and weaving in all her area’s of art like fashion, design, sculpture, photography and moving image and she often regenerate her work to create her next piece pushing and adding more each time.

I like that through her work she will create something that accidently reflecting things or moment from her life like her sculpture …… which reflects the view of the city an motorway outside her window which weaves in an out of its self

. ‘The subconscious mind at work’ lol.

I like that through her work she will create something that accidently reflecting images or moment from her life like her sculpture …… which reflects the view of the city an motorway outside her window which weaves in an out of its self

. ‘The subconscious mind at work’ lol.

Filipe Tohi in some pieces uses weaving in a similar way as he uses it for grid and structure in his art. His sculptures Mata Tangaroa and Mataki Moana’ court my eye strait away when I walked into his exhibition as I noticed a weaving pattern knowing that we had to compeer the two artists through there weaving influence.

Matataki MoanaMata Tangaroa

Mataki Moana is probably my favourite piece of his because of the size as it is large rock and very detailed. I like the shape how it wasn’t perfectly circle and kind of looks as if it there’s movement inside it. I also liked the way the light hits the sculpture as the patterns are solid squares with hard edges creating shadows which gives the sculpture life and flexibility. When I was told that it represents a net it made sense to me as there would be fish inside it moving, altering the shape.

In my opinion it is his Pacific influence where his weaving pattern reflects in his work from tapa cloth, Halamoana sculpture to wood carvings, drawings and the making of bounding thread. The two artists are both intrigued by weaving patterns but approach the form from a different angles as Crowe’s has more of an architectural structural form and Tohi looks more Pacific influenced that carries symbols and tells a story.