Archive News
Exploring oue Pacific heritage using art - 15 Mar 2010
Migration and cultural heritage are the concurrent themes behind two new exhibitions at Tauranga Art Gallery, Hawaiki and Pacific Washup.
As the titles suggest, both relate to the origins of Mäori and Pacific cultures using symbols, metaphor and in the case of Pacific Washup, humour, to tell their stories.
Hawaiki has long been regarded as the homeland of Mäori. In his painting installation of the same name, Hawaiki, artist Nigel Borell explores the idea that Mäori may have originated from Oceania and Southeast Asia, a theory suggested through the scientific investigation of geography, linguistics and DNA.
Borell uses such things as plants and food sources as metaphors to discuss the relationships between people, places, cultures and countries. Many of these items have been used in both Mäori and Asian art for centuries, independently of each other.
For example, the whau (also known as New Zealand mulberry or corkwood), is found in the North Island and also in Hawai'i and Hong Kong. The gourd is often used in kowhaiwhai (customary painting) to refer to family ties, or whakapapa, and likewise it has been used in artmaking for centuries in Chinese and Southeast Asian cultures to signify the same.
Pacific Washup, a video by Rachael Rakena, Brian Fuata and Fez Fa’anana, all of Polynesian heritage, takes a more comical approach. In strange scenes we see brown bodies wrapped in cheap plastic carry-bags, often used by travellers, washing up on Sydney's Bondi Beach, a humorous take on migrant arrivals.
The bags are typically used by Polynesians as luggage in their frequent air travels, reinforcing the idea of a mobile Pacific culture.
Both Hawaiki and Pacific Washup can be viewed at the Gallery from 6 March until 16 May.
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