Locate, 2009,Stainless steel, 6000mm X 2000mm X 2000mm Graham Bennett’s Locate explores and layers the concept of projection through measure, control and weight. The assured, balanced fragility of the piece, as it stands poised on the land, brings to mind the natural forms that surround it; clumps of tall reeds or nikau palms echoed in the overlapping steel poles, the curved centre mimicking the hulls of waka (canoes), or seed pods. We see the vision of an artist who bases his practice in the patterns of his wild home, Aotearoa, New Zealand. Bennett’s ongoing interest in the negotiation of space results in his consistent use of horizontal, vertical and diagonal frames; these act as our core agents of perception when moving around the interchanging artwork. Locate is not a reflection of Bennett’s particular personal story or ‘lived reality’ but rather a mediation of the artist’s experience in his Pacific environment; the shaping of identity through associations with place. As Bennett himself states: “I think it takes a lifetime to see. Seeing is standing upright and looking back and forward at the impact of our endeavours in relation to one another, the land and what notions of identify we hold”. Locate explores Bennett’s interest in journeying across oceans, geography, measuring and mapping. Such discoveries are also the concern of the explorer, and for Bennett we are all explorers of land, and identity. Locate elevates the land with its rising form; a response to its environment, casting dramatic shadows to create another trajectory. As Bennett says: ”My work is a convoluted journey of tangents and overlays.”
