Tame Iti and Delaney Davidson, I Will Not Speak Māori, 2022 Framed screen print, 1300 x 1000 mm each.
Photo Credit
Delaney Davidson, Tame Iti Near Rūātoki, 2022, pigment inks print on Ilford 310gsm paper, 900mm x 675mm
Photo Credit
Billy Hemmingson, Delaney and Tame printing at Massey Textiles Department, 2022, 255 x 380 mm, Inkjet print on matte paper
Photo Credit
"I Will Not Speak Māori” is a line Tame Iti was forced to write out hundreds of times by his school teachers. Now, following the kaupapa Tame has been working with for the last 50 years, Delaney and Tame collaborate to present I Will Not Speak Māori as a silkscreen print, bringing the message into monumental and corporate language, echoing Tame’s work with Billy Apple.
Playing with the ideas of tapu and noa, the cliches of white and black and the sanctified idea of law, the artists infiltrate the very territory the message originally came from. The exhibition also includes three photographs of Tame by Delaney, and an image of Tame and Delaney creating the silkscreen prints at Massey University by Billy Hemmingson.
I Will Not Speak Māori is an invitation to consider attitudes that exist today and highlights the remaining reluctance to speak te reo Māori or accept it as an official language of Aotearoa.
To view the exhibition online click here.
"I Will Not Speak Māori” is a line Tame Iti was forced to write out hundreds of times by his school teachers. Now, following the kaupapa Tame has been working with for the last 50 years, Delaney and Tame collaborate to present I Will Not Speak Māori as a silkscreen print, bringing the message into monumental and corporate language, echoing Tame’s work with Billy Apple.
Playing with the ideas of tapu and noa, the cliches of white and black and the sanctified idea of law, the artists infiltrate the very territory the message originally came from. The exhibition also includes three photographs of Tame by Delaney, and an image of Tame and Delaney creating the silkscreen prints at Massey University by Billy Hemmingson.
I Will Not Speak Māori is an invitation to consider attitudes that exist today and highlights the remaining reluctance to speak te reo Māori or accept it as an official language of Aotearoa.
To view the exhibition online click here.
