Bartley & Company Art is delighted to welcome three new artists to show alongside our senior and celebrated artist Lonnie Hutchinson in Taumauri.

All four artists share an interest in whakapapa as a primary means of making sense of the world and their connection to self, others and the wider environment.

Whakapapa accounts for the way in which the earth, sky, oceans, rivers, elements, minerals, plants, animals and all people have been created. All things are linked through whakapapa, as well as having their individual place in the world. Ultimately, it is whakapapa that connects people to each other, to their ancestors, to the land, to the oceans and the universe. Lonnie Hutchinson

The word taumauri, meaning calmness and deliberation, captures the intentions of these artist which are political and poetic. They employ the language of contemporary art, abstraction and the metaphorical meaning of pattern and form to generate reflections on, and assertions of, non-western world views world that speak to and affirm their own cultures and experience.


Lonnie Hutchinson (Samoan, Māori (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kuri,) Scottish and English) is a much acclaimed artist whose work is inspired by indigenous histories, women’s histories and craft practice. For this exhibition, she has created three circular aluminium discs which operate as heraldic devices or clan shields to assert and celebrate all aspects of her identity and heritage and the reality of hybridity in the 21st century. These ‘shields’ blend her signature kōwhawhai and koru cut-out forms with -hand-painted symbols.

Maioha Kara (Waikato, Ngāti Kahungunu, Te Arawa, Ngāti Porou) provided the title for this exhibition and her oval, stained birch works, with their insets of shimmering glitter, are a continuation of her interests in cyclical pattern and Mauri as life force. They offer, she says, a moment to pause, recalibrate and relocate in one’s surroundings and to acknowledge the Mauri within and around us.

Nina Oberg Humphries (Cook Islands, Pākehā), creates artworks that draw on Cook Islands culture and history to explore the maintenance and advancement of culture for successive generations living in Aotearoa and the wider diaspora. Her ‘feather gods’, referencing early pre-Christian non-human representation of gods, speak to contemporary Pacific-Aotearoa narratives and experience.

Raukura Turei (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngā Rauru Kitahi) uses painting as a tool to connect with her tīpuna and to evoke the strength of ngā atua wāhine, female Māori gods, to enhance mana wāhine. The paintings in this show reflect on her journey back to her Tūrangwaewae on the shores of Tīkapa Moana/the Hauraki Gulf and “the ocean’s ability to strip away generational trauma”. Her distinctive deeply textured surfaces are made with materials she has gathered from whenua connected to her own whakapapa, predominantly aumoana/blue clay and onepū/black ironsands.

Artists

  • Lonnie Hutchinson
  • Maioha Kara
  • Nina Oberg Humphries
  • Raukura Turei

Date

  • Thu 08 Sep

Time

  • 5:30 pm — 7:30 pm

Address

  • Level 2/22 Garrett Street
  • Te Aro
  • Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington 6011