Mobile Tangles by Pauline Rhodes for SCAPE 8

Pauline Rhodes Mobile Tangles 2015. Commissioned by SCAPE Public Art. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo by Bridgit Anderson.

Christchurch artist Pauline Rhodes created a series of three Mobile Tangles; portable installations which utilised materials common to the rebuild, including water infrastructure hoses, pre-cast concrete boxes, and tradies’ caged trailers. Whilst specifically designed for SCAPE 8: New Intimacies, the Mobile Tangles also demonstrated Pauline’s continuing engagement with the city’s waterways, tidal zones and geomorphology. The cage structure of the trailers and the water pipes gave a subtle nod to Pauline’s first work for SCAPE, Ziggurat (2000), in which Waimakariri river stones were contained in wire gabions to form a pyramid structure. Whilst Ziggurat commented on the futility of trying to contain Canterbury rivers, in 2015 – post quakes – the bright blue twists of Mobile Tangles made another wry comment: the cages of the trailers, struggling to contain the hosing, mimicked the way civic infrastructure constantly wrestles with the watery landscape of Christchurch. During SCAPE 8: New Intimacies, the works were parked near the Ōtākaro Avon River, The Arts Centre of Christchurch, and the Canterbury Museum, in reference to the heritage architecture of these spaces. After SCAPE 8 finished, the materials used in their making were returned to the supply-chain and ended up in use in the rebuild of the city.