Source: Porirua City Council
Three new exhibitions opened on Saturday as part of Pātaka Art + Museum’s stunning new season.
The provocative exhibition Diane Prince: Activist Artist showcases a selection of Diane’s works. Diane (Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Whatua and Ngāti Kahu) is a painter, weaver, installation art practitioner, set designer and educator, whose multimedia practice emphasises Māori rights, particularly Māori women’s rights.
The artworks focus on the close relationship between activism and art, with both facets deeply significant to an understanding of Māori and New Zealand (art) history. As we head into 50 years since the Māori Land March, Prince re-creates many of her previous works for a new audience – with political messages connecting even the quietest of her artworks.
The second exhibition Rangirua presents two takes on the two-person exhibition, connecting two pairings of two artists: jewellers Neke Moa with Rowan Panther and mark-makers Gabrielle Amodeo alongside Martin Thompson. Rangirua, which translates to “two minds”, celebrates the comparisons and conversations that emerge when artists are placed side by side.
In Taku Hoe, artists reconnect across Te Moananui a Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean) in the third exhibition, which features works from artists from the Aotearoa delegation for the 2024 Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture (FestPAC).
The artworks represented at Pātaka include Cry of the Stolen People – Black Birding of the Tokelau Islands by Porirua-based Tokelauan artists Jack Kirifi, Moses Viliamu, Matthew Lepaio and the late Zac Mateo. The audio-visual installation tells the little-known history of Pacific slavery.
Mid-December those three exhibitions will be joined by Boro – Timeworn Textiles from Japan, celebrating textile art, and the unnamed women who created it. Boro is a method of hand-sewn, repeated repairs that use sashiko – a running stitch, ideally the size of a grain of rice – to beautifully preserve and recycle fabric with cherished textiles passed down through generations.
