Rebekah Rasmussen
27 July – 15 August
Loose Parts and Joyful Mayhem explores the boundaries between a child’s and an adult’s creativity.
Artist Rebekah Rasmussen celebrates humble materials and playful processes resulting in a colourful medley of serendipitous collapse. Inspired by and created with students from Te Aro Kura, Loose Parts and Joyful Mayhem is centred around the idea of ako – a concept of reciprocal learning that acknowledges how new knowledge and understandings grow from shared learning experiences.
Free Family Workshop
12pm - 3pm, Saturday 1 August
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Viewing the world through childlike sensibilities, artist Rebekah Rasmussen presents a colourful medley of serendipitous collapse. Inspired by and created with the help of students from Te Aro School, Loose Parts and Joyful Mayhem celebrates humble materials and playful processes.
After becoming a mother Rasmussen’s practice took a new direction. Pushing back at the perceived constructs and physical parameters in which the roles ‘mother and artist’ positioned her, she saw how her experience as a mother was rich with viable source material. As her daughter grew, she began collaborating with her, navigating the space where a child’s and an adult's creativity intersect.
Acknowledging the reciprocal learning that happened within this process prompted Rasmussen to explore the idea of collaboration with young artists further. The concept of Ako refers to a shared learning experience where new knowledge and understanding can grow. It was within her developing understanding of Ako that Rasmussen extended her research to work with her daughter's school, through weekly art sessions with a class of year 3 and 4 students during Term 4 in 2019.
The process was full of inspiring creations and failed ones, as well as a lot of problem solving. Plasticine pine cones, gloopy hands and precarious towers vied with one near miss of skewer-meets-eyeball and the odd burn from a glue gun. It was child’s play, and work, a playful celebration, loads of mess and lots of tidying up.
