The living room of his Newton flat, which doubles as his artist studio, looks out over a section of Auckland’s elevated motorways where three major arterial roads converge. These monumental structures of concrete and steel twist upon themselves as if they were gigantic snakes, writhing and constricting. Connecting the south, west and north, each day they funnel tens of thousands of passengers, and many thousands of tonnes of goods, in, out, and through the city. The dominating physical presence of these structures cleave their way through the inner suburbs, violently and abruptly rupturing their immediate surrounds. Carving up the spaces, effectively creating barriers and would-be no man’s lands. This could be a view from any number of modern cities across the globe. It is one which is at once spectacular, awesome—surely a marvel of modern engineering and technological advancement—and yet equally brutal, ugly, and thoroughly dehumanising.
I’m here on the advice of a good friend, to meet with young artist Hikalu Clarke and see works that he’s made over the past two years. Pieces made whilst the country, and this city most acutely, was isolating under a series of successive and persistent lockdowns; that were made in what an outspoken former prime minister derisively surmised as our “hermit kingdom”...
