Chris Yri Connolly: What we take with us / 14 October 2025 – 1 February 2026

Chris Yri Connolly ‘Searching for evidence of a tuskless small fry’ 2025, mixed media installa­tion. Courtesy of the artist. (detail)Chris Yri Connolly

What we take with us

Since 2019 and as a generous addition to their role as principal sponsor of the annual Whanganui Arts Review, Pattillo have supported a gallery-led initiative called the Pattillo Project which is an opportuni­ty for the open award winner to develop a solo exhibition project. Since 2019 this has been a highlight of our programme and has given each of the recipients a chance to develop a focused project with the support of the gallery’s curatorial team.

Chris Yri Connolly was the 2022 recipient with his work Past Possessive, Future Possessive—Umpire Chair in six parts, an enigmatic and elegant sculpture crafted from poplar and other compo­nents. For this solo project, Connolly was inspired by the Roorkhee Chair (safari chair) invented by the Indian Army Corps of Engineers in Roorkhee, India in the late 19th century to provide lightweight, portable seating during fast moving campaigns. The components of the chair essentially broke down to a bag of sticks, making it an early version of ‘flat pack furniture’.

Connolly’s ‘chair’ is made of eleven components. By creating multiple sets, he reimagines these as a body of sculp­tural works that offer a multiplicity of readings. The works are an expanded exploration of the exhibition’s title, What we take with us—considering, both literally and figuratively, what we might carry with us into the unknown. The lead pieces in the installation are cast from sculpted and found objects connected to the artist and belonging to people in his life, who gave their blessing for the objects to be cast. Each has particular significance to their owners. What we take with us also reflects on movement; movement through time and moving on from somewhere, physically and in memory. For Connolly this is collective memory but also personal—in particular, exploring movement as a homage to his grandmother, who was a lifelong dancer.

Unlike the mass production of most flat packed items, Connolly’s components have been painstakingly hand crafted from poplar, much of it being timber that would normally be rejected. He sees the labour of transforming his chosen material as an important part of the process of creating the work. Connolly’s works celebrate the physicality of construction, making us consider that efficiency and productivity are not always the right path to an object that might rather be imbued with humanity. He is interested in gesture and the invitational aspect of a chair. With a background in choreography, sound and design, Connolly’s works are lyrical, residing poetically in the space they inhabit. He describes the chairs as unresolved questions, the skeletal frameworks laid flat suggest archaeology while others stand in for actors in a performance, with gangly legs and arcing dowels.

Connolly has crafted a ‘project’ that had its beginnings in the form of a chair, but from that he has cast out multiple lines of enquiry that con­verge in a light and thought-provoking installation about memory, objects and materials.

Greg Donson

Senior Curator & Programmes Manager