![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/rsz_te_taki_2016-1.jpg\" "\\"rsz_te_taki_2016")
<\/a>Te Taki. Film Still, 2016.<\/p>\n“Te Taki” is a safe gateway into the two video installations “Elemental” (2016) and “Wheturangi” (2015). It was commissioned to serve the same purpose for the permanent collection of the Waitangi Museum in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“Elemental” includes four large independently looped video projections of personified fire, earth, air and water, each on one wall. The \u2018motion portraits\u2019 are female faces, blinking slowly with their hair splayed across the top of the composition, and surrounded by costumes built of natural materials. “Fire” expresses rage, “Earth” a rumbling sadness, “Air” bears mischief on the corners of her mouth, and “Water” a still stoicism. The first element visible from the gallery entrance is strategically placed “Earth”, the grounding element and signifier of home. Osborne and Mace each come from a transcontinental ancestry respectively including: Clan Fyfe, Clan Caduggan and Kai Tahu; and Ngati Maru, Ngati Tamatera, Clan O\u2019Boyle and Ngai Te Rangi. Being able to call the earth you stand on a home would certainly alleviate homesickness for a nomad.<\/p>\n Capturing a more cosmological, spiritual home is the video installation “Whet\u016brangi.” Behind a curtain in a dark room, seven screens independently on loop are placed in the formation of the Matariki (Pleiades) constellation that appears on the horizon in June marking the Maori New Year. A mystical woman appears on each of the seven screens embodying one of the constellation\u2019s qualities, narrative oral traditions or Osborne\u2019s own imagination. As the looped videos are not synchronized, the natural sounds and harmonic humming as well as the interplay between figures are technically proficient. The notes are constantly in harmony, the rhythms a soothing pulse, the space vibrates with energy and the darkness is womblike. The portraits and constellation are unmoving but the experience is ever changing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>Installation view of Elemental, Fire (left), Earth (middle) and Water (right)<\/p>\n<\/a>Elemental: Fire, detail, 2016, video still<\/p>\n<\/a>Elemental: Earth, 2016, video still<\/p>\n<\/a>Elemental: Air, 2016, video still<\/p>\n<\/a>Elemental: Water, 2016, video still<\/p>\n