'Queen's Chain - Staff (axis mundi)'

The works in the 'Queen's Chain' series are largely an allegory to a process of coastal erosion - both metaphoric and literal. The materials selected show signs of erosion, having served as house cladding for decades; the timber shingles have mostly been salvaged from building sites prior to being dumped.
Their colour and surface evoke once common coastal New Zealand baches, which are being steadily superseded by large, often ostentatious homes, seemingly at odds with both their site and more traditional coastal building traditions. While this architectural shift is reflective of the changed value and status of New Zealand coastal land, this shift has often dramatically changed the appearance of and restricted access to areas traditionally reserved for use by all New Zealanders, whilst also pushing coastal land prices outside the range of most New Zealanders.
The vertical column format of these works may suggest a surveyor's theodalite staff, tidal depth or lane markers and in some a series of stacked landscapes.
These columns also represent an 'axis mundi' (world axis, center of the world) a ubiquitous symbol that crosses human cultures. The image expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet. The axis mundi image appears in every region of the world and takes many forms. It may have the form of a natural object (a mountain, a tree, a column of smoke) or a product of human manufacture (a staff, a pou whenua, a tower, a ladder, a totem, a lighthouse, a skyscraper) and appears in both religious and secular contexts.
The symbol originates in a natural and universal psychological perception: that the spot one occupies stands at the center of the world. From the center one may venture in any of the four cardinal directions. Representations of the axis mundi abound in the world. The symbol can operate in and represent any number of locales at once, personal or collective, where one stands in the present, ones home both physical and or spiritual.

P. McKinnon, August 2009