53Porirua
Prue MacDougall
Navigating Worlds
Pataka Art + Museum
24 May–30 June
MALCOLM BURGESS
You’ve never seen tattoos like Prue
MacDougall’s—or maybe you have?
In Navigating Worlds, the artist’s
third show at Pataka, the metaphors
of body-as-map and world-as-body
merge to create images that are on
the one level highly symbolic and
unreal, and on another, decorative
and everyday. This is certainly the
case with Miss New Zealand, in which
the jagged geography of Aotearoa
is tattooed down a woman’s back,
a staggering feat of endurance were
this to be documentary photography.
However, this is art, constructed to
please the eye while also comparing
thequalitiesofa country,New
Zealand,withthoseofa person,a
woman,specifically,suggestingin
theprocessthemesofabundance
andfertility,aswellasconquest,
subjugationandsubmission.Adding
tothemystery,arethefactsthat,on
themundanelevel,thesedayspeople
reallydogettattoosthisbigand
convoluted,for no apparentsignificant
reason;andalsothatforcenturies,
complex,narrativetattooshave
played a significantpart in the way
indigenouspeopleshavetoldtheir
storiesdowntheages.
PrueMacDougallis a printmaker,
artistanda sculptor-of-sorts,her
modesspanningtwo,threeand
sometimesfourdimensions,if time
canalsobeconsidereda canvas.Bythe
latter,I donotmeanmovingimages
(althoughmovingthesecertainlyare),
but works that tackle the flow of timeas one of their subjects. In Navigating
Worlds MacDougall overlays
timescapes separated by centuries,
layering ancient journeys over our
idea of them now, creating present-day
fantasies of the past, and past fantasies
of the present. This in turn creates a
fantasy whakapapa—serious in its
narrative intention, yet comedic for
its anachronisms—confronting myths
that may have fuelled the journeys of
Empire in the first place.
In Travel Planner conquest appears
to be casually planned, as one might
an OE, or family holiday; in the work
titled O.E., the globe is a plaything,
tucked casually under the arm as a
figure ventures carefree into the world,
naked but for pigment. A darker take
on the same idea is up for grabs in
The Offering, in which the world—or
a conception of it—is gifted, without
consideration for any of the realities
it may represent. At the same time,
it is easy to think of the carving up
of territories inhabited by gift-giving
cultures where the notion of property
is anathema.
Other works are lighter, such as
Migrating Bird, in which ships, gods
and birds are buffeted by the moody
ocean storm of a woman’s hair; others
darker, and more suggestive, as in
Choker, in which a clasp encircling a
woman’s neck evokes bondage, while
the southern reach of the Australian
continent serves as a blindfold.
In exploring its many themes—
migration, memory and identity
among them—Navigating Worlds treats
us to an epic voyage with compelling
inward, backward and cosmic views,
of selfhood and identity, and all the
phantoms that ebb and flow as the fog
parts on uncertain shorelines of horror,
comedy, beauty and darkness.(above)
PRUE MacDOUGALL
Migrating Bird 2019
Ink on paper, 540 x 680 mm.
(left)
PRUE MacDOUGALL
The Offering 2019
Ink on paper, 680 x 540 mm.
(right)
PRUE MacDOUGALL
O.E. 2019
Ink on paper, 680 x 540 mm.