Upon first glance at this piece, I was amazed at the size and volume of this piece. I felt Maureen Lander successfully played with the fundamentals of weight and light. it portrayed light and dark in a different, unique way. The light centre seems to pull your eye in, drawing the viewer towards the light and away from the darkness. it reminded me of the saying “there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel”. As humans, we feel light brings safety as dark is seen to be scarier, almost ominous. I feel the use of the light gives the artwork an almost eerie look but is also settling In the fact that the light is shining through the darkness. The light almost gives the artwork a sense of floating but the density of the layers of material makes it look heavy, although made from a thin light material. I was curious how Lander was able to create a sense of weight out of such a thin material. When viewing Atapō from the side it unravelled the mechanics behind this work. The 12 sheets of material work together to create a range of densities around the main diamond cut out.
-Atapō- view from the second floor.-Whenua by Kore-Robert Jahnke This was one artwork that challenged me. It’s meaning almost aligned with Atapō, as it represents space and time as well as dark vs light. the almost hypnotic look of this piece drew me to it but it also took me a while to figure out what this work might be trying to convey. -Eunoia by Te Rongo Kirkwood This piece much like Atapō uses a diamond shape as well as light and dark. I really like the smallest red diamond, it reminded me of a heart in the centre. This work also challenged me in the fact that it’s meaning was unclear to me. at first, but once reading about this work I came to find it was alike atapō. it uses similar techniques to convey the contrast between light day/ night day.
