“Small Axe 09” is a collaborative video project incorporating a series of interviews with women as they straighten their hair. Produced by Janet Lilo and infused with work from Tanu Gago, Leilani Kake, Visesio Siasau + Serene Tay and Angela Tiatia, the project explores hair straightening as a metaphorical enquiry about cultural transformation when “brown art” from South Auckland moves into other exhibition spaces. Small Axe 09 is the Fresh Gallery Otara contribution to Auckland’s New Artists Show at Artspace. The show is a highlight of the Auckland exhibition calendar and promotes emerging national talent. Also exhibiting at Artspace are Newcall, a central Auckland based gallery and None, Dunedin’s long-running, enigmatic performance space. The Show runs from 5 September to 10 October 2009 at Artspace, Level 1, 300 Karangahape Road, Auckland.
Niuean playwright Arnette Arapai’s new 10 minute theatre piece “Tangimama’s 21st” is a feature of Victoria University’s “Writers on Mondays” programme for 2009. “Writers on Mondays” is organised by the International Institute of Modern Letters to showcase writers who are active in and around Wellington, as well as guests from overseas. The month of September is dedicated to an exciting and varied line-up of writers for screen, page and stage. These writers of the future are currently enrolled in the prestigious Masters of Creative Writing (Scriptwriting stream). Arnette Arapai is the only Pasifika student currently enrolled in the course. Her piece shows at the Te Papa Museum Marae (Level 4 of the museum) in Wellington on Monday 28th September 2009, from 12.15pm to 1.15pm. Free entry.
“Sampling Tahi” is an installation offering a rich mix of Michel Tuffery’s interpretation of traditional and contemporary Pacific history and material culture. The showcase opens today (Thursday 27 August 2009) at Staple Furniture and Design in Wellington (Cnr Bond & Lombard Streets). Michel Tuffery is of Samoan, Tahitian, and Cook Islands heritage and is well known as a leading New Zealand artist, skilfully working across a wide range of artistic mediums. In 2008 Michel was honoured with becoming a Member of the New Zealand Merit of Order in the Queens Honours List. This launch will also feature the first release of Tuffery’s new series of woodblock prints.
(Michel Tuffery: Le Folauga, the Past Coming Forward, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, 2009. Image from the Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust website.)
After seven long years of planning, the Whangarei Art Museum is exhibiting 25 years of creative art by one of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s leading Pacific artists. In this exhibition, John Ioane stands tall as one of the country and the region’s most compelling and accomplished contemporary artists. Bringing together his painting, sculpture, music, film, performance, body adornment and oratory, the exhibition is the first public viewing of John’s R18 installation “Polly Wants A Cracker”. The installation questions current Pacific values of sensuality and sexual identity. Also exhibited will be two body-cast sculptures of a Polynesian male and female, fabricated in sugar crystals and encased in Perspex vitrines. Commissioned by the Whangarei Art Museum, this new work exposes the deadly ravages of diabetes in Pacific Island communities. This installation will be filmed on-line as it is gradually devoured by ants which are allowed into the cases through Perspex feeder tubes into the floor to the ground below. The slow process of disintegration will be a poignant metaphor for the nascent obesity epidemic which is attacking Pacific Island people. The exhibition runs from 31 August to 26 October 2009.
Visual artists who reside in the Manukau area are invited to submit proposals for an innovative and colourful two-dimensional mural for the stage structure in Ferguson Oaks on Dawson Road, near the Tupu Youth Library in Otara. At the moment, the site is well used by local youth as a meeting place but it isn’t very attractive. The creation of a new mural will improve the park’s appearance and bring colour and creativity to the stage structure. This is an opportunity to bring local visual arts into the public realm. The project encourages local participation in the park and promotes community ownership of public art in South Auckland. Submissions close on Friday 4 September, 2009. The Dawson Road Mural Project is a collaboration between Manukau Arts, Libraries, Parks, the Manukau Beautification Trust, and the Otara community. For enquiries, please contact Ema Tavola, Pacific Arts Coordinator, Manukau Arts Email: Ema.Tavola@manukau.govt.nz; Ph. 09 271 6019 / 027 4650493.
Click here for excellent video interviews with those who use the park.
Artists Shigeyuki Kihara and Rosanna Raymond have received the honour to exhibit their work at the October Gallery in London. The exhibition is titled “ethKnowcentrix – Museums Inside the Artist” and will run from 10 September to 10 October 2009. Kihara is a multimedia and performance artist of Samoan and Japanese descent who uses photography to explore themes of representation, spirituality, performativity, and gender. In 2008, she held a solo exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and won the distinction of having her work acquired by the museum for its permanent collection. She is the current Artist in Residence at the Campbelltown Arts Centre in Sydney. Raymond is a poet, performer, costume designer, dancer, and jewellery-maker, and curator. She is of Samoan and Pakeha descent and was a founding member of the acclaimed art collective Pacific Sisters. She was co-curator and artistic director of the Pasifika Styles festival in Cambridge (England) between 2006 and 2008. In “ethKnowcentrix”, she continues her exploration of the Pacific dusky maiden motif. Using poetry, performance, costume, body adornment, film and photography, the work produces a resounding celebration of the Pacific female spirit. Exhibiting with Kihara and Raymond are George Nuku, an internationally celebrated Maori sculptor and multimedia artist, and Lisa Reihana a Maori artist who comments on gender politics, cultural agency and museological interventions, through film and multimedia art. An Artists’ Forum, an Artists’ Talk, and a Poroporoaki (farewell) have been scheduled for 12 September 2009, 10 am – 7.30 pm (£15/£10 conc); 15th September 2009, 6.30 pm (free); and 10th October 2009, 3 pm (free) respectively.
Alistair Campbell, the celebrated Cook Islands and New Zealand poet, playwright and novelist has died, aged 84. Campbell was born in Rarotonga in 1925, shifting to live in a Dunedin orphanage at the age of eight after his parents died. As a young man, Campbell moved to Wellington where he joined the Wellington Group, writing alongside the likes of James K Baxter, Louis Johnson and W. H. Oliver. He had early success with his first book Mine Eyes Dazzle in 1950. In 1961 he wrote a novel for children The Happy Summer before writing a series of six plays for radio. The best-known of them was Bough Breaks (1970), which was later turned into a stage version and published in McNaughton’s Contemporary New Zealand Plays in 1974. He tutored creative writing nationally and internationally, and was president of the writers’ organisation, PEN, for a year. In 1997, Campbell was awarded the Pacific Islands Artist’s Award and in 1999, he received an honorary doctorate in literature from Victoria University of Wellington. He received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for poetry in 2005 and was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the same year. (Content adapted from One News).
The Auckland public will be treated to a veritable feast of Tongan artistic creativity on Saturday 15 August 2009. The day starts off at 11 am with an Artist Floor Talk by Vivesio Siasau who will speak about his current solo exhibition “Ahoeitu – Dawn Break” at the Fresh Gallery Otara. At 1pm, three bilingual Tongan children’s books will be launched by Kula-’Uli Publishing at Fale Pasifika, University of Auckland. Kulimoe’anga Stone Maka’s solo exhibition Faka’ahu – Contemporary Fumage opens at 5 pm at the McCarthy Gallery in Parnell. This exciting exhibition runs until September 3, 2009.
Artistic director Nina Nawalowalo, creator of the ground breaking “Vula”, comes back to the Bats Theatre this August to launch “The Conchus Season”. The Conch showcases an exciting crop of emerging Maori and Pacific performers with pieces moving from across an explosive cocktail of Tap, Hip Hop and Kapa Haka, through magic and illusion, writing and multi-character story telling. Audiences are guaranteed a night of vision and variety much like they did over the past three years with “Vula”, Nina Nawalowalo’s previous production. Last year, “Vula” enjoyed a sell out season at London’s Barbican Centre. The “Conchus Season” plays at 7 pm from Tuesday 18 to Saturday 29 August 2009 (no shows on Sundays and Mondays). Tickets are $16 full / $13 concession and can be purchased by e-mailing book@bats.co.nz. Ask the Box Office about school matinees.
“Spirit of the People” is the name of an exciting exhibition of new Melanesian art. Curated by Giles Peterson in association with Okaioceanikart, the exhibition features work by contemporary artists from Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, and the Solomon Islands. “Spirit of the People” runs from 13th August to 27th September 2009 at the Corban Estate Arts Centre, 426 Great North Road, Henderson, Waitakere City. An added feature of the exhibition will be an ArtSpeak by Samoan poets Selina Tusitala Marsh, Serie Barford and Doug Poole at 7 pm on Wednesday 16th September at the same venue (free entry).
