Wairua

Hiria Anderson, The Special News, 2022, oil on canvas, 400mm x 500mm. Image courtesy of the artist and Page Galleries. Photo: Michael Mahne Lamb.

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Hiria Anderson, Nan's Lounge, 2022, oil on canvas, 355mm x 300mm. Image courtesy of the artist and Page Galleries. Photo: Michael Mahne Lamb.

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Hiria Anderson, The Piano Recital, 2022, oil on canvas, 200mm x 250mm. Image courtesy of the artist and Page Galleries. Photo: Michael Mahne Lamb.

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Hiria Anderson, Waiting for Santa, 2022 oil on canvas 410mm x 310mm. Image courtesy of the artist and Page Galleries. Photo: Michael Mahne Lamb.

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Hiria Anderson, Whānau ora waiting room, 2022, oil on canvas, 300mm x 355mm. Image courtesy of the artist and Page Galleries. Photo: Michael Mahne Lamb.

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Installation view from Hiria Anderson, Wairua, 19 May – 11 June 2022 at Page Galleries. Image courtesy of the artist and Page Galleries. Photo: Michael Mahne Lamb.

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Installation view from Hiria Anderson, Wairua, 19 May – 11 June 2022 at Page Galleries. Image courtesy of the artist and Page Galleries. Photo: Michael Mahne Lamb.

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Artist

Hiria Anderson

pagegalleries.co.nz

Hiria Anderson (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Rereahu) surveys her immediate surroundings and those individuals and relationships within her community of Ōtorohanga. The artist captures in detail the intimacy, incongruity, and poeticism of the everyday and with it the interplay between tikanga Māori and contemporary municipal life. Several works acknowledge the context and daily realities of Covid-19, with Anderson depicting members of her whānau wearing medical masks and watching televised government press conferences within the close interiors of hotel rooms. While her works regularly convey bustling activity, they are equally occupied by a sense of absence; painstakingly depicting figures from obscure viewpoints, vacant spaces, or the minutiae of discarded objects.