Take the Red Line to La Reforma

Take the Red Line to La Reforma, 2025

Dried Cempasúchil (Mexican Marigold) and Celosia cristata (Cockscomb), found mica fragments from Oaxaca, glass seed beads, tin coated steel, thermally bonded thread, oil pastel.

Take the Red Line to La Reforma unfolds as a field of attention where fragments become offerings, thresholds transform into shrines, and materials shimmer with endurance and memory. The title gestures to a tether linking the intertwined colonial histories of Mexico and Aotearoa—a bloodline carrying traces of indigenous resilience alongside Wilce’s personal journey as Welsh-Pākehā learning to locate herself within a layered past. Wilce’s interventions invite viewers to explore the tension between presence and absence, visibility and invisibility, history and memory.

In response to her time in Mexico, Wilce draws from a collection of found material fragments gathered from Mexico City and Oaxaca. Carefully combined with a restrained palette of tin-coated steel and glass seed beads, the pieces hum softly and steadily, like a low-frequency memory vibrating through the architecture. The mica shards shimmer with archaeological presence and dried flowers become delicate offerings.

The jewellery-like forms mimic hinges, brackets, latches, and edges; places of transition and tension. Bonded with the architectural thresholds of the gallery, they are an invitation for slow looking, second glances, and quiet discovery. The subtle, recurring motifs in the tin plate—stamped rivet circles and sun-ray shapes—evoke both the devotional symbolism of Mesoamerican art and the industrial textures of manufacturing.

The Engine Room’s former life as a motor workshop and the deep colonial legacy of its Pukeahu site subtly pulse beneath the surface of these works. A trap door propped ajar reveals the detritus of previous lives—fallen glitter, rusty nails, dust—illuminated gently by a soft glow. Tuned to the building’s breath, this work resists spectacle in favour of intimacy, it resonates with history, care, and quiet insistence. It’s the kind of sound you feel more than hear—the kind that asks you to lean in.

For Floración de Corazón: A Karanga to Mexico.

The Engine Room. 9-19/09/25

Floración de Corazón is an exhibition showcasing art works by recent Prime Ministers Scholarship awardees, who went on a month-long immersive art and cultural exchange to Mexico in November 2024.

Unified by the experience the “Tocayo_collective”  was created by the eight  Massey University fine arts students ranging from third year to MFA as well as recent graduates.

The art works in this show talk of culture, place, love and loss, life and death and are a celebration of inner journey art can take us on. It is our ‘karanga to Mexico’, a country vast and complex that opened its arms to us and shared her beauty. Mexico has changed us all in ways that our art making practice will unpack for years to come.

Due to funding cuts to the Prime Ministers scholarship, the Tocayo_collective is among the last to be given the opportunity to make personal connections, grow a deeper understanding, and learn about the traditions of one of our partner countries in South American and Southeast Asia.

Art is valuable beyond money, it carries a little piece of the human heart.

Cuts to the art funding hurt.

Floración de Corazón translates to “A flourishing of the heart”, it is what we experienced, made visual, made real..  It is our thank you to Mexico.