The Exhibition...afio mai

Images Gwil Owen






George Nuku

When you enact your culture you don’t need to translate your culture anymore. You should say something clearly to the other world before you present your culture.

As much as there’s taonga in a museum, the reasons our ancestors made them isn’t in the museum. So we should just carry on making, and stop crying about what we don’t have and how that’s stopping us from living - stop grovelling to the big guys in the big house so we can have our stuff back.

I feel sorry that the taonga aren’t breathing like they would out in the garden or wherever, getting damaged and getting sweaty Maori hands fondling them and snot and tears all over them and being kissed and stuff.

But come on man, do you honestly think a lock and key and maybe a reinforced door is going to contain the power that those things represent? It’s like trying to bottle air mate, it’s impossible!

Outer Space Marae (2006)
Carved acrylic plastic


Image Gwil Owen

Michel Tuffery

The museum’s almost like a marae or a church. There’s a spiritual side. I don’t go to church, my own church is just going to the galleries or going to spaces with really interesting things to say about the objects. It’s mainly what the object does to you. It’s actually up to the individual to come up with their own way of bringing it alive.


Insects from Samoa (1988)
MDF board sealed with oil-based ink

Lau mea ola Laiti (1988)
MDF board sealed with oil-based ink

Fa’a Samoa Matai (1988)
MDF board sealed with oil-based ink

Samoan Kai Moana (1988)
MDF board sealed with oil-based ink

Pili Pili Pili Siva (1999)
MDF board sealed with oil-based ink

Halfcasting Samoan Fishingman (1999)
MDF board sealed with oil-based ink

Trading Fish from Samoa (1999)
MDF board sealed with oil-based ink




Image Gwil Owen
Francis Upritchard

Francis Upritchard was born in 1976 in New Zealand, and now lives and works in London.

Jealous Saboteurs (2005)
hockey sticks, plastic, modelling materials



Image Gwil Owen
Tracey Tawhiao

Symbols are in us all. They are a memory of our creation inherited from our blood. If we go back far enough into our memory bank the entire human race is a collective symbol. My paintings are a photograph of my memory. If you see something familiar the chances are it is because we are all indigenous to creation. This feeling is fundamental to showing my work.

Heart Infection (2006)
mixed media on canvas

Chris Charteris

Before I start making, I think about what sort of energy I wish to portray. In making these works I have contemplated what would be appropriate for a chief or a person with big mana to wear. What would have enough power, status and impact. These are set-aside objects made for a particular purpose. If purpose is there, it affects the material whether pounamu (greenstone) or plastic.

Wasekaseka (2005)
clear perspex and linen

Wedding Lei (2004)
totorere "large ostrich foot" shells, nylon


Image Gwil Owen
Shigeyuki Kihara

What people see with me is the surface of what’s being presented to them, but not necessarily what you would call 'reality'. I am Polynesian, I am Asian. I appear publicly and live as a woman within my male anatomical body - also known as Fa'a fafine in Samoa, and 'third gender' is the closest western interpretation.

The Fa'a fafine work questions the western classification of race, gender and sexuality. I can never fit into them, but at the same time I ask myself - are they worth fitting into?

Fa’a fafine: in a manner of a woman (2005)
Photographic triptych; C-type photographic prints and mixed media

Courtesy of Shigeyuki Kihara and the Sherman Galleries, Sydney, Australia


Image Gwil Owen
Niki Hastings-McFall

Who judges what’s authentic and what isn’t?! I think it’s very dependant on the times you’re working in.

We’re all in some way or another migrants at some stage, and I think that makes for a different take on things, rather than if you’ve been born in the same country as your ancestors for ever and ever.

Dad’s Chair (2006)
synthetic fabric lei flowers, armchair, ashtray, lamp and printed slide image


Portrait of artist with work, Sherry Roberts
Hemi Macgregor

In reality, appropriation is a social mandate in New Zealand mainstream society: 'what is mine is mine and what's yours is mine too’. To help 'them' (which is us) is not to give 'them' (us) what 'they' (still us) want but to give 'them' (us again) what 'we' (not us) think 'they' (us) need.

Urge, Purge Pure (2004)
embroidered hooded sweatshirts


Image Gwil Owen
Nick McFarlane

I have become a cultural magpie. When I deal with New Zealand's cultural identity in my work I am drawing on all of the history of the land as 'I am' a New Zealander and that is forever. I look toward my European ancestry, towards its culture, traditions and history and then try to rework it with a New Zealand angle.

Wealth gap division (2004)
Hand-stitched leather, broken glass, frame

Domestic violence cycles (2004)
Hand-stitched leather, frame

Savaged culture (2004)
Hand-stitched leather, broken glass, frame



Image Carine Durand

Filipe Tohi

Lalava has been used for every Pacific island. This is the technology that they use, for building canoes, fishing, making nets, all kind of things they use. I have started to transform the lalava into different forms.

Lalava is an ancestor of the computer. It's very mathematical, very scientific. We look at the pattern as just decoration, but in the old days it was the language of communication, that is life also.

Tupu'anga (ancestor, origin or source) (2005)
plastic