Pod by Pat Hoffie, 2003

This is a gouache and ink work on paper, created in the year 2003. Measuring 69 centimetres high and 50 centimetres wide, it is 1 of 22 shown here from a series entitled Ready to Assemble. On the back wall, 2 rows are displayed, 3 works on top and 7 below. The first work in the top row, on this back wall, is the work described. This work from the Ready to Assemble series has a simple blonde wooden frame and is displayed on a black painted wall.

In this work, a pod of whales, four larger whales and two calves, travel from right to left across creamy brown coloured paper, perhaps on the move, migrating to southern oceans. They are lifelike and serenely float across the surface of the work. IKEA furniture instructions and fine line diagrams drawn in white are also overlaid across the work, visual cues for how to assemble a cupboard. On the top right-hand side, the artist has included a deliberate thick, opaque, white brushstroke which travels down the right-hand side of the artwork, falling short of reaching the bottom right-hand corner. Inside the white brushstroke but drawn upside down is the image of an Asian woman in elaborate dress. The bodice and tights she wears have a chequered print and the body of the dress has a pleated skirt attached that fans out and finishes at her knees. Six black ink blotches are also concentrated in this area around the figure and the white brushstroke.

The artist explains,

I’d painted another collection of works on paper; it was a kind of personal compendium of wins and losses, of what we’ve been able to achieve as a species and what we might have failed to grasp. And across the surface, in between the got-it-wrong mistakes and spills and leak-outs, were floating grids of IKEA how-to-assemble instructions. Even then, it was looking like the world was going to need fixing. I never gave the series a title. I just kept working away on them. I only ever exhibited one or two pieces, until people showed some interest decades later.