Raul Ortega Ayala
Associate Professor, Whiti o Rehua School of Art
Ortega Ayala is a visual artist and associate professor at Massey University. His research-based practice is focused on social issues.
In the past he has used ethnographic methods like that of participant observation and embodiment of knowledge to purposefully immerse himself in the worlds of gardening, the office and food. For his An Ethnography on Gardening Series (2005-8) for example, he took a job as a gardener for over two years in London and then produced a series of works that include the use of grafting techniques, botanical illustration, scents and processed based work. For the series Food for Thought he attended several cooking and butchering courses in several cities and worked in the food service industry to produce an ambitious series of works that explore what food is beyond bodily sustenance.
Most recently he has been developing a large series of works under the umbrella title of From the Pit of EtCetera that explore how societies remember, forget or repress their past. Projects in this series include The Zone (2013-2020), which focuses on the exclusion zone in the Ukraine that was evacuated after the accident in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The project includes a film that follows the stories of four former residents of the area and an extensive set of photographic field-notes. His most recent project is Montserrat (a phono-archaeology), which focuses on the sounds of an island in the Caribbean that was devastated by a hurricane and a volcanic eruption in 1995.
His work has been shown in venues such as the Frans Hals Museum and Geementemuseum in the Netherlands, Delfina Foundation, Barbican Centre, Liverpool Biennial and Tramway in the UK, Arp Museum in Germany, Museo Experimental El Eco and Museo Jumex in Mexico, amongst others.
LINKS
Proyectos Monclova Gallery (Mexico)
Durst Britt and Mayhew Gallery (Netherlands)
