June 2022. Ōtautahi Christchurch based SCAPE Public Art curates New Zealand’s premier public art exhibitions, showcasing leading national and international contemporary artists, and providing a springboard for emerging local talent. Season 2022's Catalogue features Mirror Image by Aotearoa NZ sculptor Gill Gatfield with artworks by leading Māori artist and curator Prof. Robert Jahnke and Tongan Diaspora artist Sione Monū - recently profiled in NY Times Queer Indigenous Artists Reclaiming a Fluid Sense of Gender.
Mirror Image holds the outline of a C19th cheval mirror, an object connected with domesticity and feminine beauty, and a 'good' commonly traded or gifted to indigenous peoples in an era when mirrors represented the coloniser's god-like power. Neither mirror nor image, the sculpture's geometry and optical effects cast shadows that replicate a 'mirror image' on the ground. An alluring sensory experience, Mirror Image faces backward and forward, offering a glimpse into non-linear time.