He tangata Tiriti ahau
I whanau mai ahau i Whakatū
E noho ana ahau i Tāmaki Makaurau
I te taha o te moana Manukau
I te taha o te awa Whau
I te rohe ā-iwi o Te Kawerau ā maki
Nō Ingarani, Weira, Kōtirana, Aerana aku tīpuna
Emily O’Hara is tangata Tiriti, born in Nelson and now living in the Whau, in the rohe of Te Kawerau ā maki in Tāmaki Makaurau. She is in the first generation of her family to be born in Aotearoa, with her ancestors hailing from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
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I was born on the 27th of February 1984 (a leap year), and named in honour of my grandmother who died before I was born. These two events sowed the seed for my enduring fascination with time, forming a large part of why my spatial-arts practice turned toward durational work in 2017. Since then, I have embarked on a series of projects, allowing them to build up what I term ‘critical mass’ over time. I make work related to the everyday, particularly the rhythms and repetitions of life and death. I am interested in ideas of the feminine, the maternal, and regular everyday temporal registers (such as the moon, bodies of water, rocks, salt, fog, and fire).
I see my practice as a way to understand the multiple scales of time and space that we collectively exist within, from the everyday to the celestial. I work directly with worldly phenomena, which often require me to wait; from diurnal shifts of day and night to lunar cycles, rainfall or for the sun or moonlight to strike a precise position. Some of these rhythms are eternal and seemingly unchangeable; others are intermittent, arriving without much warning. I work with materials that change over time and seek to question the idea of permanence. These approaches and the rhythms they work with offer the security of continuity but also help me remain open to poetic possibilities and the ways in which I seek to make meaning of the unknown.
Contact emilyoharadesign@gmail.com
