A Place to Stand
A few years ago now I created a painting that I called ‘Standing Still, Still Standing’. It was a gee up to myself during a particularly difficult time for me personally but those words written in that way across my painting gave me a great sense of comfort. A sense of ‘being alright’ despite my circumstances. It occurred to me too, much later, that inside those words, was the very place I would choose to stand.
“Tūrangawaewae is one of the most well-known and powerful Māori concepts. Literally tūranga (standing place), waewae (feet), it is often translated as ‘a place to stand’. Tūrangawaewae are places where we feel especially empowered and connected. They are our foundation, our place in the world, our home. In the concept of tūrangawaewae, the external world is a reflection of an inner sense of security and foundation. The mountains, rivers and waterways to which one can claim a relationship also express this internal sense of foundation.
Not alone in this thought, I recall Sydney-based (at the time) Simryn Gill often began her projects by posing a question ‘For Standing Still’ an ongoing series of more than 110 photographs Gill queried whether a group of photographs could “hold within them, and between them, that unsettling quality of a sort of hesitation in time, stilled time. Time standing still.“
“Simryn was raised in Malaysia. The images were taken on return trips between 2000 and 2003 while working on other series, including Dalam, an impressive collection of 258 photographs capturing the interiors of individual Malaysian homes in what becomes a survey of social, economic, and religious diversity. Standing Still combines the peculiarities of location and Gill’s intention to record a passing moment, creating what she calls “a place in time.”
The strength of her exhibition ‘Standing Still’ resided in the universal implications of what she found in the abandoned buildings: the amorphous quality of time tinged with the emotionally resonant concept of memory. But her photographic series also contain invisible “protagonists,” such as trust, in Dalam, and humor, in A small town at the turn of the century. In Standing Still, we find hope. A strong countercurrent to the melancholy located in the abandoned is the optimism that pervaded the original dreams and intentions.”
What I do is words and what they do is clothe my thoughts and create for me a place where I can and do stand. They go before me to the ‘standing place’ where they know my feet will finally come to rest, do you ever feel that? Yes? Not really. They can you know. Mine have stood with me in my disappointed days and deliriously joyous ones too. They never leave me to stand alone in my mihi (talk) with life.
I belong, isn’t that something? You and me, we belong. Wherever and whenever we choose to belong we just can and we just do. As my feet come to rest in this place today, inside my tūrangawaewae, I feel connected. My feet firmly in the mud about where the next bend in the road is. Well wishes to you all today.
