Mike Kay acknowledges the traditional kaitiaki of the rohe on which he currently lives and creates, the Kāi Tahu. He recognises their continuing connection to land, waters and culture.
By experimenting with aleatoric processes, Mike Kay investigates the dynamics of performance, including the manipulation of its effects and the limits of spectacle based on our assumptions of what performance means to us. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of our imagination.
His performances establish a link between the art’s reality and that imagined by its conceiver. These works focus on concrete questions that determine our existence. By exploring the concept of performance in a nostalgic way, he absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. This personal follow-up and revival of a past tradition is important as an act of meditation.
His works feature coincidental, accidental and unexpected connections which make it possible to revise art history and, even better, to complement it. By contesting the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, he formalises the coincidental and emphasises the conscious process of composition that is behind the seemingly random works.
