The Leiomano Series

Fragments of a lullaby no.1
Supa Cloth, thread, glass and plastics beads, pompoms
Dimensions Variable
Photograph: Ari Hatzis

The leiomano series of works came about as a response to a fundraising auction held by the Marine Conservation Society of Australia, and as such, thinking about the concerns and issues paramount to the Society. 

I was drawn to the leiomano of various Polynesian communities: weapons and tools made both utilitarian and decorative by the use of sharks’ teeth.  These objects are products of piscatorial societies that lived in unison with the seas.  They are representative of a time and people, which respected and revered the abyssal power of our planets’ oceans – a source that fed and nourished but which would also take away. 

At night I am kept awake dreaming of boats, and ships and liners, criss-crossing the waters of our globe, transporting their cargoes of import/export food furniture post drunken P&O singles marines cars, and I think of all the life that is destroyed in the wake of our passages – sea kill.

These contemporary leiomano are child-like rattles toys, inversions of the old and knowledgeable ways of living – they are new talismans for future generations. 

Will we?  Will our children grow up to live play and learn the respect we need to continue living and surviving sustainably?  We need to bring back those Gods of the seas; kamohoalii, dakuwaqa - those pelagic protectors of the Deep Triton speared planetary Neptune - to protect our Oceans for the future, both from and for ourselves.

These collections of leiomano are like fragments of songs – of lullabies and nursery rhymes.  Half – remembered, half sung.  Half-found.  Half-heard.

These collections of leiomano are like fragments seen and displayed in museums.  Artefact.   Artifice.   Remembrances  remnants of something past.   Pieces of a déjà-vu – something vital within us.

In these pastel hues, these songs, these memories are the links that tie us to one another, that tie us to the seas that we travel.  These rivers of love that swirl around us and in which we swim, these oceans that lap back and forth.    Ebb and flow and the tides of giving and taking – we must remember.  Rediscover. 

Somewhere else lurking within these toys made from tools, there lies too the fierceness of love, the desire to protect and to guard at all costs. 

Requiem for Sofia
Supa cloth, glas and plastic beads, acrylic string
Dimensions variable
Photograph: Ari Hatzis

Fragments of a lullaby no.3 

Supa Cloth, thread, glass and plastics beads, pompoms

Dimensions Variable

Photograph: Ari Hatzis

Fragments of a lullaby no.2 

Supa Cloth, thread, glass beads

Dimensions Variable

Photograph: Ari Hatzis