Making a solo exhibition for Fresh Gallery Ōtara after a determined commitment to quit curating in late 2023 has been a curious act.
I’ve loved the process of transforming the Vunilagi Vou gallery into a functional working studio. Without this transformed space and time commitment to making art rather than exhibitions, I wouldn’t have been able to produce the work I’ve made.
To Live + Die in South Auckland is a significant show, because Fresh Gallery Ōtara was a significant part of my life and practice. I spent six and half years working on the Fresh Gallery Ōtara kaupapa between 2006 and 2012, and made 66 shows during that time. Fresh Gallery Ōtara was a space where local and indigenous artists found community, confidence and support, and through that work / service, I gradually found confidence in my own voice.
Three years after opening Fresh, I made my first solo, BLOOD+BONE (2009), but didn’t make another solo for eight more years. Entitled Dark Meat (2017), this second solo continued the bodily theme, and was followed five years later by Backbone (2022). This was perhaps a trilogy, because the show I’ve made for Fresh feels different, less internalised and bound by the confines of my body, more… free.
This exhibition has been purposefully programmed as Fresh Gallery Ōtara’s 18th anniversary show. It was devised to reflect significant moments of life and death that I’ve encountered in my time living here since 2002, specifically, moments that have anchored me to this space, where I’ve evolved, mentally and spiritually. The show was pitched as a site-specific narrative that would engage and confront local audiences, and expand thinking about the social, cultural and political landscape of South Auckland. I drew poetically on this idea of American poet, novelist, and literary critic, Robert Penn Warren, who says:
You live through that little piece of time that is yours, but that piece of time is not only your own life, it is the summing-up of all the other lives that are simultaneously with yours… What you are is an expression of history.
Managing the development of the exhibition from what was proposed, like a curator, and then producing the work, as an artist, has been a unique form of psychological chaos! These two positions – one making a show, the other making the artwork – have formed a constant dialogue in my head for the past five months. So, I am deeply grateful to peers who have offered critical feedback and discussion, and to my friend, Nigel Borell, who is acknowledged as Curator Tautoko for the show.
To lean in to being an artist has felt liberating and powerful, but the act of curating, feels significantly necessary and what Fresh Gallery Ōtara and her local audiences deserve. To Live + Die in South Auckland is a show that was made site-specifically, as a full-circle, symbolic return.
Please join us to celebrate the opening of
To Live + Die in South Auckland
WHEN: 10.30am, Saturday 4 May
WHERE: Fresh Gallery Ōtara, 5/46 Fairmall, Ōtara Town Centre, South Auckland
EXHIBITION DATES: 4 May – 15 June 2024
If you can’t make the opening – a morning affair – here are some cool opportunities to come and learn more about the show:
- I’ll be discussing the exhibition in an Artist Floor Talk at Fresh Gallery Ōtara on Saturday 11 May from 2-3.30pm – free and open to the public.
- On Friday 17 May, I’ve nominated Columbus Cafe in Mitre10 Botany as a local East Auckland spot to hold a relaxed artist talk courtesy of Arts Out East! Kicking off at 10.30am, come along and learn why the Mitre10 garden centre has become my happy place! All welcome, more info here.
- Although the collage works in the exhibition are digital, on Saturday 18 May from 10am-12pm, I’ll be running a paper collage workshop space in the gallery, using an eclectic range of found images to create new meanings – all ages and abilities, all welcome, open to the public.
- On Friday 7 June, my excellent Curator Tautoko Nigel Borell and I will be convening a panel of lively storytelling in Can I get a witness? – A Fresh Gallery Ōtara Witness Seminar! Loosly borrowing the format of a witness seminar, this DIY version brings together artists and community members who were part of the gallery’s early years in what promises to be an evening of tall tales and hazy memories! Join us from 7-9pm – doors open at 6.30pm – all welcome.
Vinaka vakalevu for those who have followed the Vunilagi Vou journey since 2019. Some may have noticed that Fresh Gallery Ōtara’s anniversary is also the same timeframe of Vunilagi Vou’s anniversary. Fresh Gallery Ōtara was opened on May 26, 2006, and Vunilagi Vou was opened on May 31, 2019; the opening of Vunilagi Vou was an intentional alignment, a continuum of practice and service.
To Live + Die in South Auckland is Vunilagi Vou’s 5th anniversary, a symbolic return, a beginning and an end – a perfect manifestation of the vunilagi.