2022
Amalgamated Brick and Pipe is conceived as an archive, combining sound, image, text and sculpture to create a system which explores the, now destroyed, Clark Brick and Pipe Works in Hobsonville-Point, west of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Building upon his sculptural practice and interest in New Zealand history, Ziggy Lever‘s installation centres the detritus of the factory, tracking its legacy of contaminating the nearby shoreline with ceramic waste from the factory. Scattered across the bays, ceramic objects weather, grow barnacles and host the mangroves taking root around them. Making comment on history, industry and nature, Lever’s work invites careful critique and examination into national narratives of this New Zealand industry success.
“Upon a visit to the site in 2013, it struck me that these objects were going through a process of returning to clay. Removing some of the objects from the site, I wondered how this act might affect their relationship to time, and both preserve the state of the “amalgamated brick and pipe” and interrupt its material journey. Here there is a parallel to the problems of archaeological intervention, which seek to preserve certain aspects of an historical site yet affect other aspects of the site itself.”
Text by Micheal Do for Aotearoa Made, 2022
© Copyright Ziggy Lever
