Interview with Lisa Reihana - PANCAKE October 2002Interview with Lisa Reihana - PANCAKE October 2002Jacquie Clarke: Pancake as a body of work is vampish and suggestively textured - at the same time it's also very NZ.

Lisa Reihana: Although I'm Maori, I'm also Pakeha with Welsh, English and Jewish ancestry. Pancake is about being a New Zealander with the colour of this show being definitely Caucasian. Hence the titles of the works suggest a pale epidermal theme. They are suntan, pimples and freckles, flesh, buff and nude ('upholstery for the blind'). So skin is the surface motif of the show. I have ethical problems with New Zealand agricultural practices, the felling of the forests of Aotearoa to make way for sheep - I see them as 'maggots on the landscape'. I'm no big fan of lamb. Though I've always been attracted to things that slightly repel me, still I am strangely drawn to the remnants of dead animals. I was a vegetarian for years [I gave it up] but I still find meat a bit disgusting. It's uneconomical to discard materials, so I'm deliberately working with waste products.

New Zealand was seen as the larder of Europe. The meat industry located itself to exploit itinerant Maori labour. In my whanau my uncles, aunties and cousins have earned their livelihoods through spilling blood on abattoir floors. The national ritual of sheep rearing and slaughtering has caused major dislocation and breakdown of our traditional iwi communities. The Pakeha had the land and the Maori did the killing.

JC: Hence this show is 100% animal products. This is interesting because this is your 'Pakeha' show on the surface, but there is this volatile Maori content at the core of it or just underneath the skin. Maybe it's hard to separate those cultural positions out.

LR: I love my family who support me in my work and attend art openings in full effect. I watch my mother who is Pakeha, and I wonder if she wonders where she fits into all of this. I have always included subtle references to her, things that she's said or clothes that she wore, but now I want to do something more obvious. The Maori elements in my work are more overt and known, because I was born in Aotearoa and I know it better than England and Wales.

It's an interesting and difficult notion to talk about. I have been asked whether my [Maori/cultural] work maintains its strength and integrity when shown in an Art Gallery as opposed to a Marae context. Showing work in a Marae is seen as more 'traditional' and 'museological', it gains authenticity through being imbued with the spirituality of that place. Real engagement also happens within white walled galleries. The reality is that artists make cultural products to be consumed. So transactions take place and I'm not just meaning financial ones. The act of consuming does not have to be seen as pejorative always.

JC: Let's talk about your Nanny then too cause you keep saying how Pancake reminds you of her?

LR: My Nana Dann owned a haberdashery store at Lynfield Shopping Mall a suburb of Auckland. She made childrenswear and ran fashion shows in the carpark. We: me, my sisters and my cousins were her pint-sized catwalk models. I love the skills she has passed down to my mother, to us all. Sylvia has spoken of her times working as a tailor in London, during the difficult blitz days of World War Two. She couldn't afford a sewing machine. So Nana Sylvia made this clothing the only way she could, by hand, stitch by stitch. Her workmanship is immaculate. And this war ethic necessitated recycling, to extend the life of an object, not unlike quilt-making. I want to align myself with women, particularly black women artists and writers who maintain this tradition. Quilts are often made from cast-offs, in my works the use of leather provides an exotic appearance.

Old ladies have this delicate papery, crepey skin. I love it and find it very sculptural. You can see into the layers underneath - little jets of bloodlines just below the surface. And so I chose the name 'Pancake' because it references another age and the make-up women like my Nana Dann use. Pancake is a fine dusting of powder on the top of skin, like the texture of flour on top of freshly baked bread - very soft. And we are so phobic about ageing and wrinkles, myself included, so this work is about-facing my phobias.

JC: The colour of the show is quite muted. It's the perfect mid-tone show. Pancake is sort of classically restrained but highly suggestive and camp at the same time.

LR: Beige is big in fashion and design. When I went to visit my local tannery, there was this big box of flesh-coloured leather and I just dived in. I was in leather heaven, and as I delved further into this box I realised there was a huge range of differences between each skin. In women's fashion magazines the first eight to ten pages are devoted to full-page advertisements for perfect skin, anti-ageing creams, etc. These flesh coloured leathers displayed the complete range of imperfections and phobias all women are brainwashed into hiding from: wrinkles, pimples, thin and thick skin, dry patches, uneven colour etc. I was smitten.

JC: Suede is consumed as a favoured souvenir product in New Zealand. In the past suede was manufactured into car seat covers, ug boots, ski mittens. This show sort of makes that industry look a little strange. Now suede is a high-end designer preference. Pancake plays on that neutered aesthetic of contemporary design. The gallery has become the ultimate living room with the fabric that is usually saved for the couch is now adorning the walls.

LR: I was staring homelessness in the face while I was preparing for this show so I think I was subconsciously making myself a home. These hides are second grade leather so they're used the way animal skins were used in cave dwellings - the ultimate original interior. This is soft architecture. This show exudes a stylized comfort, and is a film set at the same time. Actually I was very attracted to the brick walls of ASA Gallery, and knowing of its impending closure, I wanted to make a work that specifically honoured its history. Foundation was a quilt that emulated the brick tiles of the walls, which are a feature of this space. I liked the play on words, foundation is the basis of a building, but foundation is a make-up used to slyly obscure imperfections.

JC: What about these horn works? They are so camp and exquisite, so sexy and funny -

LR: Living with my friend Kirsty Cameron put me in touch with my animalistic side, and these works grew out of her gift of those horns to me. I love the freedom Marcel Duchamp unleashed with his found objects. My found objects are three-dimensional collages and they represent playtime. They are adult toys, not quite for sexual pleasure, although they seem very sexual with their inclusion of fur and feathers and leathers and their twisted phallic-ness. But truly they are adult toys because they are just fun to play with and look at, they are inanimate until you pick them up and waggle them around. I like to suspend them so the action of someone walking into a room sends them into a slow spin. They are asymmetrical so they slowly bobble and turn. These relate to my animation practice, but are a much easier option because I don't even have to film them, they just are characters in an imaginary place.

The installation 'Shoal' [pronounced school] relates to an idea I have of otherworldliness and hybridity. I wanted to create a compound of underwater and overland creatures - hybrid interventions. It's fantasy - some kind of hysterical/ridiculous reaction to the concept of bi-culturalism. Here are all these 'bitsers'. Bits of this and bits of that, horns from some animal from another country, grafted onto some other thing from another land - bought together by my own hand, and my treasure trove of collected textural things. The furry horns and feathered leathers seemed natural companion elements for Pancake.