Following the highly successful 2010 Manukau Pacific Arts Summit, Fresh Gallery Otara celebrates its fourth anniversary with Blood’s Thicker Than Mud, a solo exhibition by Terry Koloamatangi Klavenes. This is Klavenes’ second solo exhibition at Fresh Gallery Otara. After his first solo exhibition at Fresh Gallery Otara in 2007, Hybrids and Hafekasis, Klavenes went on to win the Martin Hughes Contemporary Pacific Art Award. His work was included in Urban Kainga, curated by Reuben Friend, at City Gallery Wellington’s new Deane Gallery early in 2010. Blood’s Thicker than Mud has been selected to represent the gallery’s culture and identity on its fourth anniversary and its success in taking south Auckland/Manukau City artistic excellence to New Zealand and the world. The exhibition runs from 14 May to 12June, 2010. Terry Koloamatangi Klavenes will present an Artist Floor Talk in conversation with renowned artist, curator and arts advisor Jim Vivieaere at 12 noon on Saturday 29 May, 2010. The venue is Fresh Gallery Otara, Otara Community Courtyard, Otara, South Auckland.
(Untitled 09, digital C print, 210×210mm // Courtesy of T. Klavenes and Fresh Gallery Otara)
Since its establishment in May 2006 as a partnership between the Otara community and Manukau City Council, Fresh Gallery Otara has presented almost 50 exhibitions featuring the work of more than 120 artists. With a focus on contemporary Pacific art Fresh Gallery Otara has programmed exhibitions that have strong contextual and cultural references to the site of Otara and the local community, which is almost 70% Polynesian and 20% Maori with 40% of the community under 20 years of age. The gallery has served as a platform from which local artists have been able to launch themselves into the next stage of their artistic career. One of them, local artist Terry Koloamatangi Klavenes, has been selected to to represent the gallery’s culture and identity at the milestone with his photographic exhibition Blood’s Thicker than Mud. Speaking about the impact the gallery has made, Klavenes says “a humble little art gallery found in the heart of Otara has been instrumental in shattering many of the stereotypes connected to South Auckland art and artists. Over its short history, Fresh Gallery Otara has presented artwork that has pushed, challenged and reshaped the boundaries of our art. I’m honoured to have my work shown as part of the fourth anniversary celebrations and count myself privileged to be a part of Fresh Gallery Otara’s history.”
Viewers have two more days to enjoy “Tongan Style”, an exhibition featuring the Tongan art and practice of embroidery and crocheting. The exhibition has been showing since 16 April at the Fresh Gallery Otara in South Auckland and will end this Saturday 8 May 2010 with an artists’ floor talk. “Tongan Style” is a special tribute to five Tongan-born, New Zealand based women artists and their embroidered and crocheted sheets, pillow cases and dresses. Curator Kolokesa Mahina-Tuai says embroidery and crochet as fine arts play a significant role in Tongan ceremonies – including gift giving, birthdays, weddings and funeral decorations. Other Pacific cultures practice the art of embroidery and crocheting including the Cook Islands and Kiribati but this exhibition features the work and garments of five Tongan women: Lingisiva ‘Aloua, Kolokesa Kulikefu, Noma ‘Ofa-ki-nu’usila Talakia’atu, Manuesina Tonata and Hulita Tupou. (For more information, read an article about the exhibition in the Papakura Courier, 5 May, 2010.)
Detail of embroidered pillowcase made in the 1990s by Kolokesa Kulīkefu. (Image courtesy of the Fresh Gallery Otara.)
Manukau Arts in partnership with the Pacific Arts Committee of Creative New Zealand is proud to present the CNZ Heritage Arts Fono as part of the 2010 Manukau Pacific Arts Summit. The Fono takes place at the Otara Music Arts Centre (crn of Newbury and Bairds Road) from 10 am to 3 pm on Friday 7 May, 2010. The fono will discuss Creative New Zealand’s Heritage Arts strategy, projects and opportunities. Heritage art practices are art forms that have been brought to New Zealand from the Pacific Islands and which are presently sustained by individuals, communities, elders or experts who maintain traditional knowledge through their art practice. Heritage arts can include language, oral arts, handicrafts, weaving, carving, tivaevae, tatau, rituals, protocols and cultural specific activities. Creative New Zealand’s Senior Programmes Advisor for Pacific Arts, Anton Carter, will be available for one-on-one sessions to build awareness around the application process. For catering purposes, registration is necessary; to register or for more information please email Brett.Stirling@manukau.govt.nz or phone Nicole Lim on 09 271 6019.
A unique event in the inaugural Manukau Pacific Arts Summit is today’s lunchtime poetry slam. Working in partnership with the British Council, UK performance poet, DJ and producer Charlie Dark will be in Otara (Auckland) to perform alongside local Pasifika poets including: Drew Harding (South Auckland Poets Collective), Ole Maiava, Courtney Meredith and Luisa Tora (Niu Waves Writer’s Collective, Fiji). The event is free and takes place on the Centre Stage of the Otara Town Centre from 12.30 – 1.30pm. Everyone is welcome. The 2010 Manukau Pacific Arts Summit is sponsored by Manukau Arts, Manukau City Council. Visit www.Manukau.govt.nz/pacificartssummit for more details.
Warm Pacific greetings to you. After two months of work to upgrade and improve the new Pacific Starmap website, the project team is pleased to announce that the site is up and running again. We hope that you will enjoy the new look and we look forward to receiving your feedback. We encourage you to visit the site and to make yourself familiar with the new tabs and functions.We apologise for being offline for so long and we look forward to making up for lost time . Vinaka vakalevu.
Traditional Cook Island Tivaevae demonstrations are set to add colour to Manukau’s Pasifika Celebrations this week. Three Manukau libraries are hosting the demonstrations as part of the city’s celebrations of its Pacific diversity. Manukau is home to 88,000 Pacific people, almost 28 per cent of its 330,000 population. Samoan is the second most spoken language in Manukau, after English. The demonstration are free and can be viewed at the following dates and venues:
- Wednesday, 17 March, 2010, 10.30am, Mangere Town Centre Library
- Thursday, 18 March, 2010, 12.30pm, Pakuranga Library
- Wednesday, 24 March, 2010, 10.30am, Otara Library
For more information, see www.manukau-libraries.govt.nz or phone 262 5101 ext 8697.
Emerging Papua New Guinean artist, Jeffry Feeger, opens a solo exhibition today (Tuesday 16 March 2010) at the Whitespace Gallery in Auckland (12 Crummer Rd, Ponsonby). Of this exhibition, Feeger says “my recent works are concerned with lives of people around me. For me it is a way of capturing truth in life. I chose to paint realism, although I experiment with texture and light and incorporate themes that are symbolic to current social issues”. Buka is off Bougainville Island where a deadly civil war raged during the 1980s and 1990s. The exhibition runs at Whitespace until Sunday 4 April, 2010.
The eighth edition of Pollywood, a festival of Pacific Island short films, is on today (Tuesday 16 March 2010) at the Otara Music Arts Centre, Bairds Road, Otara. The festival is organised by Craig Fasi and celebrates Pacific Island directors, writers, actors and artists, from grassroots to established practitioners in film and multi-media art. The films that will screen include:
- Koe Mafeaga Hala – Crossroads, produced by Taoga Niue and directed by Shane Tohovaka. This is a hard hitting documentary confronting issues regarding tradition and progression of a struggling nation
- Uso and Sole 2, directed and produced by Grayham Hall. This is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, winning the audience choice award in 2008 for the first instalment.
- One Year Later, Danny Maalo Aso Aumua /Aden Shillito
- Ko Te Tau Ata Mou Kore – Shifting Shadows, Itiri Ngaro
- To’Onai, DF Mamea and Daniel Power
- Granada, Marina Alofagia McCartney
The show opens at 7 pm and the entry fee is $5.00. Another screening will be held at Corbans Estate Art Centre, 426 Great North Road, Henderson on Thursday 18 March, 7.30pm – 9pm ($5.00 entry).
Albert Wendt, one of New Zealand’s and the Pacific’s foremost storytellers, has won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for the Asia Pacific Region for his novel The Adventures of Vela. “It is a great honour to be recognised in this way” said Professor Wendt at the Awards Ceremony in Sydney last week. “Vela has been a character I have thought about for a long time so this is a lifetime’s work”. Wendt won ahead of several prominent finalists including J. M. Coetzee (Australia and Nobel Prize Winner), Peter Carey (Australia) and Thomas Keneally (Australia). The Adventures of Vela now goes through to the final phase of the competition where an international judging panel will meet to decide the overall Commonwealth winners for Best Book and Best First Book with other regional winners from Africa, Caribbean, Canada, South Asia and Europe. The announcement of the two overall winners will take place on Monday 12 April 2010. Albert Wendt was Professor of New Zealand and Pacific Literature at the University of Auckland from 1988 to 2006, and held the Citizens’ Chair at the University of Hawaii from 2004 to 2008. He is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Auckland, and is writing and painting full-time. Albert Wendt has been an influential figure in the developments that have shaped New Zealand and Pacific literature since the 1970s, writing numerous works of fiction and several volumes of poetry, and editing notable anthologies of Pacific literature. He is also one of the Starmap champions.
(story adapted from the Booksellers website)
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