This work begins with the familiar form of the rotary clothesline, a ubiquitous feature of backyards, farms, and suburban gardens throughout New Zealand. Embedded within everyday life and associated with the rhythms of domestic labour, it is a structure designed not to be looked at, but simply used. Neither architecture nor furniture, its purpose is not contained within itself but realised through what passes across it: cloth, weather, movement, and time. It is fundamentally a structure of support.
This project transforms the familiar geometry of the clothesline into a series of sculptural frameworks installed across Te Papa's forecourt. Its utilitarian function is realised through a form organised around a central axis from which connections radiate outward. In this sense, the clothesline shares something with the pavilion, the loom, the tent, and other structures that gather materials, objects, and people around a common centre.
The introduction of cast-iron lacework shifts the clothesline into a different architectural register. The familiar backyard object begins to assume the presence of a pavilion or canopy, occupying an ambiguous territory between domestic utility and public architecture. Installed as a sequence across the plaza, the works read less as individual sculptures than as a family of related structures.
Suspended from each structure are large white sheets of Kaynemaile polycarbonate chainmesh. Neither solid nor fully transparent, these permeable surfaces catch light and wind while remaining responsive to changing environmental conditions. Sunlight, rain, illumination, and air currents become active participants in the work, producing continually shifting configurations throughout the day and night.
As the textiles move around the structures, the familiar image of the clothesline begins to dissolve. The suspended forms oscillate between object and atmosphere, representation and abstraction. At different moments they may suggest sails, banners, clouds, or wings, before slipping back into pure shape and movement. The installation does not seek a fixed meaning. Instead, it invites visitors to encounter the works as a changing field of forms, continually reshaped by weather, light, and imagination.
