Here is an edit of the catalogue text that accompanied My Ship / Tënei Wakahëra: Tracey Williams interviewed by Penelope Jackson, Tauranga Art Gallery curator (August 2009).
PJ: You were brought up in the Bay of Plenty. What are your earliest memories of the place?
TW: I grew up in the area through the 1970s and 1980s. I lived at Te Puke, Rangiuru and Tauranga. I have positive and clear memories of both the rural and the provincial. I could fill pages with my memories. To give you a snapshot: I remember being outside a lot and spending time at the beach; lamb and calf days; A&P shows; the Kaituna River; Maketu Beach; small baches at Papamoa; watching the stars under a tarpaulin on the beach with my parents; my first day at school; walking to and from school; the boy who swore a lot; playing outdoors until dusk; being an Eskimo in a church play; riding my horse; big bustling inter-family gatherings; spending time at the local marae; the clump of trees near my friend’s house we pretended were horses; fish and chip nights; my favourite kindergarten teacher; country and western concerts; long grass; a Morepork in our barn; our house cow; our aggressive rooster; the ancient tractor that my father drove from Mt Maunganui to Rangiuru; the family valiant; smashing my front teeth; Wonder Woman; The Osmonds; disco dancing and riding the school bus.
PJ: How encouraging was Tauranga Girls’ College of your artistic ambitions?
TW: I was enthused by my teachers Mark Salamonsen and Grant Thompson. But art was seen very much as a hobby – not as a career – which was also a reflection of those times socially. Subjects were encouraged that were seen as useful to get a job with.
PJ: During your childhood and teenage years what access did you have to seeing real art?
TW: The only art I saw was in books or slides at Tauranga Girls’ College. Although my mother and her friends were involved with the craft movement, which they would say is ‘real art’.
PJ: Was boating part of your family life?
TW: Not in the grand sense. We had a small wooden boat that my father had built. We spent a lot of time on coastlines, especially in the summer when we’d camp for weeks on the Coromandel. That boat (my father built) is a consistent feature of those expeditions. Later on we got a Laser yacht that I could sail.
PJ: You came to the idea about the ship and navigation/migration relatively quickly for this project. Do you think sub-consciously you’ve been thinking about this subject for some time?
TW: Yes. Absolutely. I’d made a couple of 2-d ships previously. Firstly, at Te Tuhi I made a ship that was a hybrid tall ship/waka. For that show (as with My Ship) I was researching alternative historical narratives. I found that traditional accounts of history (both Maori and European) revolved around grand narratives centred wholly on men’s actions. I made that ship out of tissue paper which was the only material I had available within my budget when I came to construct it – reminiscent of the way women ‘made-do’ historically. At a subsequent exhibition with Bowen Galleries in Wellington, I used a ship as an allegory for concealed hope. So, yes, ships have been there for a while as vehicles to explore the ‘other’ voice.
PJ: Would you describe this work as a feminist piece of art – in your exhibition brief you referred to it as ‘women’s craft work’?
TW: My concerns in researching local history were to dig below the surface of recognised narratives that demarcate Tauranga Moana. As with all culture-defining accounts, these narratives are centred on men’s accomplishments, therefore heterogeneous and subsidiary stories are often women’s. So a feminist reading is a consequence of what I am interested in – not an intention. Although I concede: however you get there, once you step into that territory you are in a political arena. I have my viewpoints, but I am not interested in them being obvious in my work. Elements of the exhibition in part critique master narratives – for example the voiding of women’s stories as a consequence of inscribing culture-defining histories exclusively through male voices and deeds. However, my concern as an artist is not to repeat or comment on them in a dogmatic or linear fashion, nor do I want to pose didactic or counter accounts of Otherness; syndromes of centre and marginalisation; and social conflicts across eras. I also want to avoid presenting utopic memorials of the past, present or future; and idealised images of society and location. My final answer to this is: When a man makes a work that contains masculine readings – do we ask if he’s man-ist?
PJ: What does the ship tell us about the state of craft, or object art, in New Zealand today?
TW: The material and technical outcomes are the most appropriate means of addressing the theoretical issues at stake. My Ship isn’t directly about craft yet that’s very much part of women’s history in New Zealand. Craft hasn’t really been included in typical art history models either. I am not sure this work would have been seen in a public gallery in New Zealand twenty years ago. Although, lately there seems to be a bit of a reversal about attitudes to craft in a wider cultural context, for example the growth in community markets demonstrates a desire to move away from mass production.
PJ: From the outset of the project you expressed, and articulated, the shipping aspect, why was that? And also I’m thinking about how it came to get the title My Ship.
TW: When I started this work I was looking on at a place I had experienced early in my life – in a different time through child’s eyes – but was approaching from a physical and emotional distance. I’m a lot closer to it now. I’ve lived and breathed it for months and I have been greatly enriched by it. I regret that I didn’t know more about the local history of Tauranga when I was growing up. Gate Pa, for example, was the name of a suburb; Matakana was simply an island; and Mt Maunganui was a surf beach. The idea of a ship as a centrepiece for the work was at once a logical step from the parable of a ship as an artefact describing both history and the hope contained in a voyage; and at the same time it literally referenced the location of the gallery – almost on the harbour’s edge. Tauranga Moana has the history of being part of New Zealand’s first peopling by means of Maori contact and settlement via Waka, followed by hamlets of Europeans; it has it has a strong trading annals, across time and within and between Maori and European; during wartimes it was a means of landfall and retreat, and the strategic positioning of redoubts and pa sites; and it is a port. When I first began my research I naively thought I would come across singular stories that would encompass alternative accounts of Tauranga’s history. Then I realised that one can only imagine another’s experience even if it shares a common trajectory. Therefore the ship is My Ship as it is the only position from which I can honestly speak with authority.
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