03/11/2025
Dearest muth, m***a lovers, friends, and the curious, you are warmly invited to our last exhibition of the year, opening this coming Saturday 8th November at 6pm. All welcome.
This iteration of our tendrilly project coils together the soft sculptural work of Hanna Shim and the heady words of Liam Jacobson, into a collaborative work, a portrait of Liam, and a tethering of Hanna to whenua.
Iteration 33 Be Happy, titled after one of Liam’s poems, is a salve for your ulcer, a tincture for your condition. Perhaps it’s a silly suggestion to Be Happy? or a light threat to Be Happy! but what better relief from these strange days, where the reigning paradigm doubles down squeezing us further and further into precarity, than to remember being happy.
Liam’s words are accompanied by a protective suite of delicate silver manaia, and traces of their travels and of letter writing. The collected ephemera softly gauges the impulse to collect through moments of rarity and weirdness. Hanna has produced a pair of werewere-kōkako native blue mushrooms out of her fathers stained old jeans and shirts. Symbolising how her family has survived in this land, and running a laundromat, they tell a story of resilience and survival - of turning what’s worn and faded, into something living and luminous. This dreamy iteration welcomes the weightless sporulation of local connection and togetherness, and the reciprocity of gift and friendship.
It is a delight to welcome Liam and Hanna to mothermother. Thank you Taarn Scott and Rozana Lee for your respective invites! ...and so our river wends.
Image: Hanna Shim, Dad’s (detail), 2025, recycled jean, cotton, poly fill, metal stand on wooden base, 420mm x 1700mm
