Axes: Tools of both construction and destruction – disruptive technology - Bennett’s axes exist within the axis of the Pacific. The pine handles (an introduced species), native timbers heads (Totara, Kauri), and Bennett’s own signature patterns reference Mangaian (Cook Island) ceremonial adzes made for trade with early explorers, and the disruptive impacts of one culture on beliefs and practices of another.
Disrupt, 2021
Each axe - 935 x 201 x 30 mm
Beginning in the 1990s Bennett made approximately 30 rubbings of various Pacific artefacts that appealed in Canterbury Museum’s collection. As each took an hour or so he thought of the maker, their time to carve - especially those worked with stone tools - the perfection of the applied design; the relationship of the surface pattern to the form.
Of particular interest the elegant and detailed Mangaian Adzes of the early 1800s that were made for trade. They were innovative – the stone head/blade came from another island, the carving was sent out for binding, and many were made in readiness for the next European trader. The once delicate handles became bold - almost cumbersome- as any concept of a functioning tool disappeared as traders showed delight in the clefts, miho and the tiki tiki patterns. Treasured by European collectors, the adzes were produced and traded up to the early years of the twentieth century.
Were these adzes the first artworks of the Pacific made for exhibition and sale?
A recent installation Disrupt 2021 was first seen in an exhibition Axis and Axes at Canterbury Museum. Disrupt comprising 33 axes had its genesis in the writings of Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa) and in Allen Curnow’s 1948 verse tragedy The Axe - a play set in Mangaia (the Cook Islands). The play is an analogy for the colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand and explores the impact of disruptive forces – metal technology and religious dogma - on a Pacific community. Although the axe marked a point of rupture, those affected could not see it coming or foresee its consequences.
Bennett’s axes are crafted from recycled native woods (heads from Kauri and Tōtara) and imported pinus radiata (handles) using contemporary technologies. The perforations on the axes depict both Bennett’s graphic warning – a circle and diagonal in a square - about the impact of human behaviour on the environment, and, the clefts observed in Mangaian adze handles: horizontal, vertical and square cut-outs.
Disrupt evokes questions of function, heritage, value, disruptive technology, and the consequences of treating nature as something to be colonised. Bennett poses a key question “how fragile is our current state of affairs?”
These quotes from Allen Curnow’s The Axe (1949) warrant consideration when thinking of disruptive forces today :-
You are too close, you cannot tell what is happening.
In time you will know, but you wont know in time.
Oh it’s no use trying to explain.
It’s just that – there isn’t time.
We’re all going to be different and – yesterday
There was always tomorrow, but today
There’s only today
Who wields the axe?
Time, and a hand unknown
Set living and dead adrift, by sea-winds blown
