Description
About Never Turn Your Back to the Ocean
From the Local Knowledge series (2014–ongoing)
By Sally Lundburg & Keith Tallett
Work Description:
This piece was the first to be exhibited in the Local Knowledge series, created for MoMA PS1’s Rockaway! exhibition in New York. The show responded to Hurricane Sandy and aimed to encourage people to return to and reconnect with the Rockaway area. The work combines a photograph of the water taken from the New York bay with a ʻōlelo noʻeau traditionally used as a warning. We chose this text and imagery as a way of sending support and thoughts to New York in a time of need, while encouraging viewers to turn toward nature, pay attention, and honor the environment around them.
Series Description:
In the Local Knowledge series, we use text, humor, and irony to explore the shifting dynamics of place and identity. Through intentional misspellings, letter placement, and image–text juxtapositions, the works allude to layered or hidden meanings. Functioning as alternative signage, they offer warnings, invitations, and anecdotal observations for communities in transition.
The concept of local knowledge refers to knowledge systems that are dynamic—continuously adapting as people respond to environmental and cultural change, and as ideas are absorbed and reinterpreted across contexts. All communities possess forms of local knowledge: rural and urban, settled and migratory, Indigenous and diasporic.
The series includes both mixed-media paintings and environmental installations (Local Knowledge, Onsite). The onsite works are documented through photography and are offered as archival prints when collected. Fifteen paintings from the series were featured in the 2017 Honolulu Biennial, where it was described as establishing “foundations for ongoing connections between local and non-local communities, strengthening Hawaiʻi’s social fabric.”
Materials:
14″ × 14″ mixed-media painting: enamel paint (with iridescent/interference effects), powdered pigment, archival inkjet rice paper, and epoxy resin on wood panel with light wood sides.
