Exhibition: Oceanic Architectural Routes: The photographic archive of Mike Austin

Mike Austin, identified for his humility, would shrink from the title ‘Godfather of Pacific Structure’, even when I take advantage of it in average jest. However there may be fact within the ruse. Parsing the canon of Pacific structure means, inevitably, encountering the work of Mike Austin. That is spectacular; the area is outlined by the watery physique that flows over one third of the planet.

Austin is a practising architect and main scholar within the area, and his images proof a lifelong architectural pictures observe. The displayed pictures have been chosen from his private archive, which paperwork his time travelling via Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Sāmoa, Tonga, the Cook dinner Islands, Hawai’i and Rapa Nui. The design of the exhibition works to underscore an extended narrative in Austin’s research, analysis and instructing of Pacific structure: that deep roots and reflective practices underpin continuous transformation of the area’s constructed realm. In our modern second, this may occasionally not sound so radical however journey again 60 years and that might not have been the case. The postmodernism to post-constructivist din would have been a bit loud whereas Austin was faithfully recording lightness and stress within the Pacific constructing and its context.¹

Or possibly it wasn’t. After I peer intently and attempt to pay attention to those pictures, it’s salty water that I hear. One must see this exhibition. {The catalogue} contains constructed realms which can be not in existence. For this viewer, a picture exhibiting energy traces stretching over silvery water and mangroves to the island of Bau in Fiji, with bure within the distance, was particularly poignant. Others will discover totally different pictures, if not this one, will communicate to them in the identical manner, I’m positive. It was taken in 1988 and the Fiji coup had simply occurred; 1989 would see the Berlin Wall come down. The world was opening to free markets and Austin was noting all the pieces he may concerning the structure of the Pacific. It’s stilling to take part on this longer view as an viewers and, because the exhibition appears to ask, to know oneself as equally agentic in telling the story of Pacific structure.

Exhibition designer Hannah Manning-Scott has performed a fantastic job, adopting a Marshallese navigational chart, additionally from Austin’s archive, and scaling it to create a body on which a number of the exhibition pictures are mounted. The construction additionally distinguishes between the waters of Polynesia and the waters of Melanesia and Micronesia. I fairly like what the gesture appears to posit about architectural exhibition-making – that revisiting Pacific marine applied sciences can play a task in creating modern areas and experiences, not solely via floor therapy however in conveying the complexity of the area. It’s of the water.

Curator Leali’ifano Albert L. Refiti has in some way performed the inconceivable, saying no to a whole bunch of Austin’s startling pictures to create an exhibition that’s narrative pushed and non-linear with out being essentialising. The trouble and its price is clear in a compelling constellation of architectural imagery that entangles custom with dwelling with change, via the lens of the architectural ethnographic. Curator and conversational accomplice to the present, Refiti does one thing else great with the fantastic threads woven throughout the present’s elements. He brings the enjoyment of storytelling that has animated analysis for generations of students who’ve labored with Austin and it’s this attribute that’s greater than the sum of the elements of analysis, instructing and observe. When you have seen his blue eyes twinkle at an architectural crit, you’ll know what I imply. A Californian star architect’s naïve assumptions about staying in a bure are included amongst the exhibition notes and supply one among many joyous detours within the exhibition.

The collaboration is productive; all bestow a way of los angeles durée on the exhibition. Refiti, an Affiliate Professor on the AUT College of Artwork and Design, is an knowledgeable within the pre-history of Pacific structure and the general sensation is one among an extended cycle of time of which we’re all half. Time will not be collapsing, it’s twisting. The cycle of life leaves an indelible watermark on this extraordinary assortment of architectural footage. It’s acceptable that, as Austin has famous: “Oceanic Homes all have a life and, due to this fact, a dying”.² The pictures have an endness to them, amplified by the expertise of the time. They’re saturated with the hue of time passing – that softening that occurs to images – and across the edges of some are the tell-tale indicators of the precarity of reminiscence: small flecks of black. That mentioned, contextualised by Refiti and Austin’s conversations, accessible by a pill on a central desk, and with Manning-Scott’s design, the general feeling is a sensation finest summed up by Austin’s personal phrases: “The hope for the longer term is for the manufacturing of an structure ensuing from the grinding collectively of land and other people within the context of ever-present ocean”.³