Bodies of Water, Made of Land is a collaborative work by Harrison Freeth and Benjamin Work that references the interconnections between body and land through the concepts of Vā (relational space) and Tā (time). Building off a previous iteration of the work at Canterbury Museum in 2023, Freeth and Work take as their point of departure their shared connections to Tonga. From here they explore how time and space intersect across people, place, objects and architecture.

Bodies of Water, Made of Land includes a house modelled after the home Freeth rents in Puketāpapa, Mount Roskill, and a metal tomotomo created by Work. Crescent-shaped tomotomo are situated at the top of the mast of Tongan voyaging vaka, acting as a director for the ship’s ropes as well as a symbolic reminder of the guiding powers of māhina, the moon. Freeth’s house points towards the tomotomo, staring at the moon with its window eyes and door mouth, under which lies a bed of volcanic rock surrounded by a sea of archival paper. Copper pirate ships which have voyaged on archival paper seas accompany warriors, who stand their ground as possible mutineers, guides or observers.

Signifying the intersections of land, sea and sky, Freeth and Work’s poetic assemblage points to the various temporal, spatial and narrative crossings that are forged through histories of migration. Exploring their shared Pālangi and Tongan heritage through overlapping motifs drawn from both cultures, the artists conceive of the present as a fluid entity crossed over by time and space – recognising that we walk forward through the past and backwards into the future.