27 Feb 2018

Sorawit Songsataya at Artspace NZ

Artspace NZ is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Auckland based artist Sorawit Songsataya.

Starling, named after a bird commonly known for its collective murmuring behaviour, presents a series of studies that move towards a more bio-philosophical viewpoint. As a 'soft-digital' environment made active and populated by viewing collaborators, Starling advocates for artistic co-production, drifting from obsessive individualism to a more modest and symbiotic perception of nature and culture alike.

Brought together within the space as an immersive installation, the exhibition entails filmic work Lovebirds, sculptural objects Four Chambers, workshop series Weave Me In, and non-hyphenated, a text based project by Robyn Maree Pickens. Emerging through cell-like forms, wool fibres, and a fleshy sea in the exhibition, is an undermining of linear ideas, theoretical frameworks, or illustrative animism.

Given the ecologically compromised world we find ourselves in, can we learn to regard other, more open, systems of knowledge and being that strip humancentric perceptions of the world? E.g. How far can the computer determine or engineer biological design? How to shape our continuous study of 'being here' by being inclusive and taking in matter, forms, and energies from our greater environment – its objects and beings – to stimulate a more dynamic cycle of interactions and co-partnership with nonhuman others?
What is brought to life in Starling is not necessarily a singular result or an outcome, instead it produces a system able to communicate new ways of being in the world. The extensive public programme aims to give insight to specific histories connected to, and connecting, the multitude of lives active in the exhibition, where materials can be handled, reformed, and changed to embody the suggestions made by the artist and network of collaborators.

What is constructed throughout this exhibition should perhaps be regarded as 'a labour of love', a non-magical gathering of experiments, not necessarily belonging to humans, but rather a political act that refuses to reimagine clear lines of gender, body, or geneology.