Excited, nervous and incredibly tired, encapsulates the emotions of students at Toihoukura Maori
Visual Arts and Design from the EIT Tairawhiti Gisborne campus as they prepare for the annual exhibition, Te Mata Ariki.
The works of 60 artists line the walls at the Maia Gallery ready to be curated by Year 2 Bachelor of Mäori Visual Arts (Te Toi o Nga Rangi) students as part of their three-year degree.
[nggallery id=20]
With Matariki, the Mäori New Year, as the central kaupapa, the works are striking in colour, texture, materials and variety.
Lisa Mangu’s imposing acrylic, dye on unstretched canvas entitled, Tena koe, Own space, is her interpretation of the Holy Trinity. “The painting represents Toku whakaporo, my foundations, my Christian beliefs,” says Lisa. The figures of Father, (Yahweh in Hebrew or Io in Maori) Son and Holy Spirit are set against passages of scripture in red for the blood of Christ, green for praise and white for purity. “It’s a deeply personal work, a thank-you to God for bringing me here.”
Tawai Williams says exhibiting her paint on canvas work, Ringatu, is like “letting people into my heart”. The kaupapa is loss of life and land and her heartache at the death of her grandfather, a Ringatu minister. She uses quick flicks of a straw to create a splatter effect with echoes of Picasso in the cubism. “It’s richly coloured and textured which makes you want to reach out and touch it – and
that’s OK,” she says.
Matariki is the time to plant the ugly beautiful kumara, “my favourite vegetable”, says Christie Patumaka who created a flower using spray-painted MDF bent into kumarashaped petals, overlaid with the seven stars of the Pleiades. The beautiful work is simply called Kumara.
Erin Langford explores her Irish ancestry in her moving painting, Beginning of a Journey, which depicts a lone woman in a desolate scene during the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, and the text of a song about the tragic impact in the village of Skibbereen.
Principal tutor Steve Gibbs says the exhibition involving ta mokopu, waituhi, uku and raranga (drawing, painting, clay and weaving) opens to the public for two months from Thursday evening. All artworks are for sale.