Textile sculptures by Jo Torr: conversations in cloth
Textiles have always been significant markers in the history of trade and exchange. In the days when travel was the exclusive province of merchants and seamen, cloth was the tactile signifier brought back from distant lands, allowing others to dream and wonder about places they might never visit.
New Zealand artist Jo Torr uses cloth as her primary medium in order to reflect on some of the stories of exchange in our own history, notably those concerning encounters between European and Pacific peoples. As she puts it, her works explore “the types of cultural exchange that have happened, and continue to happen, between Polynesian and non-Polynesian peoples – the way that we change by contact with one another… and the ideas that form our notion of what is ‘Pacific’.”
A selection of works from 2004 to 2021, reveals some of the moments in Torr’s conversations in cloth and the ideas they touch on: early contact between European explorers, Pacific Islanders and Māori (Transit of Venus II& III, Pacific Crossings), the mutual fusion and hybridizing of garment forms and decoration (works from the Ngā Kākāhu suite) and what might be seen as Torr’s personal commitment to living, meaning and being as an artist in Aotearoa New Zealand in Te Hono Wai: Where Waters Meet.
Image: Figure 1. Mark Tantrum Jo Torr Transit of Venus dress 2004. Image above: Figure 3. Jo Torr Transit of Venus III detail.
Transit of Venus II (Figure 1 photograph Michael Hall, from Tupaia’s Paintbox at City Gallery, Wellington 2005) and Pacific Crossings (Figure 2 photograph Michael Hall) belong to an exhibition named for the Tahitian prince Tupaia, who facilitated dialogue between Europeans and Pacific Islanders during Captain Cook’s first voyages in the Pacific (1769-70). It was Tupaia’s skills as navigator, mapmaker and translator that made trade and mutual discovery both possible, and relatively peacable. Study of historic pattern books and paintings helped Torr shape the distinctly 18th century silhouettes of Venus and Pacific into sculptures that echo the dress-styles of the visitors: on the one hand, loose-fitting sleeves trimmed from elbow to wrist, full skirts supported by panniers, a petticoat that falls from a centre front dip of the waist and a modest décolletage; on the other, a standup collared frockcoat with deep cuffs and slim lines, that opens in a gentle curve on an embroidered waistcoat with a cut-away centre front.
New Zealand artist Jo Torr uses cloth as her primary medium in order to reflect on some of the stories of exchange in our own history, notably those concerning encounters between European and Pacific peoples. As she puts it, her works explore “the types of cultural exchange that have happened, and continue to happen, between Polynesian and non-Polynesian peoples – the way that we change by contact with one another… and the ideas that form our notion of what is ‘Pacific’.”
A selection of works from 2004 to 2021, reveals some of the moments in Torr’s conversations in cloth and the ideas they touch on: early contact between European explorers, Pacific Islanders and Māori (Transit of Venus II& III, Pacific Crossings), the mutual fusion and hybridizing of garment forms and decoration (works from the Ngā Kākāhu suite) and what might be seen as Torr’s personal commitment to living, meaning and being as an artist in Aotearoa New Zealand in Te Hono Wai: Where Waters Meet.
Image: Figure 1. Mark Tantrum Jo Torr Transit of Venus dress 2004. Image above: Figure 3. Jo Torr Transit of Venus III detail.
Transit of Venus II (Figure 1 photograph Michael Hall, from Tupaia’s Paintbox at City Gallery, Wellington 2005) and Pacific Crossings (Figure 2 photograph Michael Hall) belong to an exhibition named for the Tahitian prince Tupaia, who facilitated dialogue between Europeans and Pacific Islanders during Captain Cook’s first voyages in the Pacific (1769-70). It was Tupaia’s skills as navigator, mapmaker and translator that made trade and mutual discovery both possible, and relatively peacable. Study of historic pattern books and paintings helped Torr shape the distinctly 18th century silhouettes of Venus and Pacific into sculptures that echo the dress-styles of the visitors: on the one hand, loose-fitting sleeves trimmed from elbow to wrist, full skirts supported by panniers, a petticoat that falls from a centre front dip of the waist and a modest décolletage; on the other, a standup collared frockcoat with deep cuffs and slim lines, that opens in a gentle curve on an embroidered waistcoat with a cut-away centre front.
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