Iteration 29

Wind to fly and flicker the flame

Rozana Lee & Taarn Scott

March 3 - 31 March 2025

All welcome to the exhibition preview Friday 28th February 6 - 8pm

please note our gallery viewing times are Monday’s 11am - 3pm or by appointment

For Iteration 29 we’re delighted to present textiles and painting by Rozana Lee, and ceramics and objects by Taarn Scott. Whilst the two bodies of works are distinctly different in context and meaning, overall the exhibition is tactile and vibrant with a deep connection to place.

Interacting and contrasting with each other, the respective works of these artists settle into the space in their own terms. Scott’s work seeps into the heritage and domestic aspects of the space where layers of time are evident and time slinks backwards against productivity. Lee’s work reaches for the bright light that spills through the windows and into the lush verdant setting that is our gallery. Across the work we see chandeliers, frangipani, beeswax, fish and moon. Here the seasons are swirling; the abundant promise of spring next to the quiet introspection and decay of autumn. Together, the works pay tribute to the ways we recognise and understand place. In Lee’s work we see cultural interpretations of nature through pattern and motif, whereas Scott’s invites nature in, as it comes, with its nonlinear aberration and unpredictability.

Taarn Scott’s work often proposes an elemental interaction, such as chimes for wind, objects for wick and flame, or bowls and fountains for water. These proposals are tethered to a sort of tense, either past or future, where something may have or will happen, grow or subside. Eitherway, the trickle and burn is abundant. The works in Iteration 29 further explore an interest in natural form and method as they reinterpret ornamentation and ostentation. We see domestic fixtures suspended in the rampant path of the non-human; wax sculptures that offer a modern gothic provocation for discourse about the climate crisis. These objects are cast-off and temporary, and utterly thirst quenching, as they shrink from the demands of growth for productivity. 

In Rozana Lee’s work, she seeks to capture the lightness of spring while highlighting natured-inspired cultural symbols found through her encounters and research. These include the four-pointed petal and its variations, a prominent motif in both Indonesian and Pasifika cultures known as Kawung, Frangipani, or Manulua; the Quatrefoil featured in many Gothic-style churches across Europe; the shippō, a four-petal flower commonly found in Japanese Kasuri ikat fabric; and the fish and bird symbols prevalent in many Asian cultures. By pairing these organic motifs with the contrasting geometric shapes of her studio floor during her residency in Japan, Lee forms an indexical relationship with the space, rendering a tactile sense of place.

Taarn Scott is an artist from Ōtepoti, based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Their practice is multidisciplinary and often collaborative, creating tactile objects informed by ornamentation and jewellery. These forms speak to ideas around habitat, environmental concerns and geographical histories.They are currently researching insects and working with wax and clay. They recently exhibited in Folded Memory at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery in 2023 & Burrow (Collapse) at Spectrum Project Space in Perth, 2024, and is a recipient of the Object Maker Aotearoa Fellowship in 2024/25.

Rozana Lee is a New Zealander of Indonesian-Chinese descent, a multi-disciplinary artist who works across textile, painting, video and installation exploring ideas related to sense of place, migration, belonging, cross-cultural mobility and identity. She is based in Tāmaki Makaurau and holds a Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland (2018). Recent exhibition include: Drawn to see(a), Blue Oyster (2024), Belonging, Bergman Gallery (2024), Spring is as sweet as shirotsumekusa, Studio Kura (2024), Memory Lines, City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi (2024), and Sekali pendatang tetap pendatang, Te Uru (2023). Lee has undertaken artist residencies in Australia, Japan, China and Singapore. She has also been a research fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig (2024) and a selected participant in the Zhelezka Project: on the tracks through Central Asia (2023), which aims to develop conceptual and methodological approaches for creating new knowledge about lesser-explored and multicultural places.