Muscle Memory – the last exhibition in Vunilagi Vou’s season of solos – opened last week with a beautiful gathering of friends, family and supporters of Genevieve Pini’s practice.
Photo by Leela BhaiPhoto by Leela BhaiPhoto by Leela BhaiPhoto by Anthony PiniPhoto by Anthony PiniPhoto by Anthony Pini
Muscle Memory features new work alongside archival pieces dating back to 2002. In an installation combining two eras of her practice, Pini presents her 2002 textile works made from cloth used to wipe the blood and ink from her father’s tatau with a 29 meter long red ribbon lei (garland) that she started making at the beginning of 2023. The installation configures the works on three mannequins – one male, one female and one clear form in between them. The opportunity to combine older and newer work reflects Pini’s ongoing enquiry into the experience and responsibilities of wearing her customary marks (tattoo) and the bonds across genealogy that never fade.
In a newer suite of works, Pini has brought a fascination in superhero capes to life. Interested in the idea of being from South Auckland as a super power, her three concept capes reference the exuberant displays of island origins and flag pride, school as a source of connection, belonging and community, and a darkness that is perhaps an inextricable part of South Auckland’s super power.
Starting in 2001, Manukau City Council (amalgamated into Auckland Council in 2010) produced a much loved design competition and runway show called Cult Couture. The homegrown annual event generated a community and culture amongst local artists where concepts like Pini’s capes were frequently presented, building a picture over the years of quintessential South Auckland / Manukau style and aesthetic. Pini herself entered numerous times, placed and won in 2007; she later styled some of her entries into an editorial for SOUTH magazine in 2012.
Muscle Memory is Pini’s first solo exhibition, and considers a practice that has quietly spanned two decades, from an era that included four years at Manukau School of Visual Arts and the experience of being tattooed with her customary marks, to the Cult Couture era, and her more recent practice of figurative self portraiture. Throughout her work, Pini’s interest in print and meditative processes endures.
Learn more about the artist and her South Auckland super powers this Friday for an Artist Talanoa – doors open at 6pm, all welcome!
Muscle Memory is Vunilagi Vou’s last programmed exhibition. Vunilagi Vou – the gallery – has seen 19 exhibitions produced and presented since June 2019. It has been fun! And challenging! And it’s time for a rest.
From 2024, Vunilagi Vou – the gallery – will operate as a studio for creative projects and occasional gatherings. The stockroom and retail space will remain open as a unique repository of small and large works, limited edition prints and a bespoke retail range, and Vunilagi Vou’s consultancy work, writing and publishing will absorb new energy and focus.
Muscle Memory is open until Saturday 10 December, outside of opening hours, appointments can be made any time by getting in touch via email, or here.
Spring was welcomed perfectly at Vunilagi Vou with Niu Lemalu’s solo exhibition, Let’s Play Outside, a suite of six new paintings made throughout 2023 with support of the Two Solos crowdfunding effort of late 2022. The exhibition’s opening in late August launched Vunilagi Vou’s revised and necessarily re-scheduled public programme after an unplanned hiatus in June/July.
Let’s Play Outside is Niu Lemalu’s second solo exhibition after his first 13 years ago at Fresh Gallery Ōtara. In this body of large-scale acrylic paintings on canvas and board, Lemalu has experimented with different painterly perspectives and techniques in studies of obscure internet meme culture and the virally bizarre.
Hasbulla’s Katon (2023), 1100x800mm, acrylic on board
Visitors to this exhibition have been painting enthusiasts, those intrigued with Lemalu’s obscure internet interests, and Vunilagi Vou supporters keen to see and experience a room full of new paintings made here in South Auckland.
In July, I delivered a paper entitled, Holding space for decolonisation in South Auckland at the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Arts Educators (ANZAAE) Conference in Wellington, check it out here:
Also in July, I had the opportunity to visit Tonga-based artists Serene Tay and Visesio Siasau, who are building an incredible space for Moana Pacific art and talanoa in Haveluloto. It was the most inspiring two weeks of deep dives into Tonga-Fiji histories and connections, Lapita pottery, curating and holding space, socio-political dynamics of art and arts appreciation, galleries and gallery culture. I am deeply grateful and can’t wait to return in 2024!
It was a privilege to speak at two Moana Oceania Pacific art exhibition openings in September; Alteration by FAFSWAG at Māngere Arts Centre, and Straight from the Horse’s Mouth by Czarina Wilson at Celebrate Aotearoa in Glen Innes, East Auckland.
Alteration is a 10 year retrospective of the award-winning collective, FAFSWAG, symbolically delivered in South Auckland, where their story began. As I noted in my speech, this 10 year milestone is testament to FAFSWAG’s awe-inspiring dedication and continuous commitment to improving our world. Not just for Pride Festivals, or as commissioned entertainment at art industry events, not just in art and exhibitions, but as a continuously visible, active community of care and change-making. FAFSWAG has evolved our world. It was a privilege to speak alongside my dear friend and fellow South Auckland-based artist-curator, Nigel Borell to help open this important exhibition that runs until 28 October 2023.
Photo by Sam Hartnett
Tongan artist and creative entrepreneur Czarina Wilson made a beautiful solo exhibition to mark the first anniversary of her gift shop, Celebrate Aotearoa in its current site on Apirana Avenue in Glen Innes. Celebrate Aotearoa is an amazing retail environment that also holds space for workshops, pop-ups and gatherings.
Having taken a small hiatus from making to get Celebrate Aotearoa off the ground, Czarina Wilson returned to her practice to make a new body of work expanding on her signature style of woven textiles, appliqué and couture statement-wear. Straight from the Horse’s Mouth explores the quilting technique known in Tongan as monomono pani, a form of puffer patchwork that lends itself beautifully to geometric design. Observed and learned from the matriarchs of Wilson’s famili, this quilting technique is used to make blankets and bedspreads that become koloa – items of cultural value gifted and received within the Tongan community.
Central to this body of work is a three-piece collection originally made for the 2023 Hokonui Fashion Awards. Produced after a break from fashion design, the collection represented a triumphant return to the catwalk after almost a decade. The garments are detail-driven, labour-intensive, and hark back to Wilson’s passion for urban Polynesian streetwear and popular culture.
The two wall works in this exhibition speak to the ways the artform of monomono connects across generations, from the cradle to the grave. They remind us that blankets hold us and wrap around us, make us feel safe, and protected. Fabrics carry story, memory, sensory nostalgia; they exist next to our skin, absorbing our tears, fears and energy.
Muscle Memory will take Vunilagi Vou’s programme out for 2023. It has been a rocky year with an unplanned closure, a stop-start momentum, and losing out on multiple applications for Creative New Zealand arts grant investment. As a result, 2024 will bring around another neccessary shapeshift.
As we approach our 4th anniversary, remembering every anniversary has in fact been within the Covid-19 pandemic and aftermath, it’s a pleasure to present the 2023 programme for Vunilagi Vou x East Tāmaki.
This fourth site of Vunilagi Vou, officially opened in August 2022, has been a flexible, evolving space. It has taken time to work out how to operate here and what this gallery space needs… it has taken time to recalibrate after a period of spacelessness in early 2022, and it has taken time to find resource from contestable funding programmes. There have been some hits, some misses, but each time, the needle has shifted again on what is possible here.
In late 2022, a grant was secured from Creative New Zealand to research and develop a solo exhibition – my own! It was the first time I have applied for and secured investment for my individual art practice. My project started with the concept of vanua from a Fijian perspective – “Fijian interconnectedness inclusive of culture, chiefs, knowledge systems, relationships, values, land, and spiritualities” (Fijian Vanua Research Framework definition, here). I was and continue to be interested in the shifting dynamics of being Tangata Moana / Tangata Tiriti in Aotearoa and the comfort/discomfort of being an indigenous settler on land violated by ongoing colonial violence.
Through extensive talanoa with Kaliopate Tavola, my father and Head of Mataqali Navusalevu, the second Mataqali in Dravuni Village in Kadavu, Fiji, the project became anchored in a visual exploration of what is known as Lapita pottery. Like footprints of ancestors, this pottery practice maps time, space and connections across Oceania, its decorative patterning a kind of DNA for visual vocabularies we use to this day. This early exploration of Lapita pottery also coincided with a chance reconnection with Tonga-based artist Serene Tay; conversations about pottery, healing, gallery building and spirituality with Serene between Wellington and South Auckland were pivotal – I’m so thankful our paths crossed like they did.
Experimenting in clayEma + Serene Tay, Wellington, November 2022Talanoa with Kaliopate Tavola, Paekākāriki, November 2022
The grant from Creative New Zealand offered me time and space to dive deeper and expand my thinking and experimental making. The gallery became a shared studio space, I returned to working with textiles and painting on loose canvas – approaches I had used as a young artist moving from Suva, Fiji to South Auckland. I’ve loved making work again, finding resolutions through assembling and mark-making, arriving at understanding through quiet contemplation.
Phallus Palace (2001)Colour Me Fiji Sulu Project (2005)Identity Complex Identity (2006)Regionalism (2009)
I use the title ‘artist-curator’ as a nod to the Cook Islands curator, Jim Vivieaere (1947-2011), who was a mentor and groundbreaker for Moana Pacific curatorial practice. I’ve long asserted that my curatorial work is an extension of my visual arts practice, but this exhibition project has reminded me that curating is a collective, outward practice, creating an identity statement with many parts, and facilitating the ways and means that statement is delivered and received. Being an artist is, in my experience, deeply introspective, a practice of trying to understand where individual experience fits within a wider collective experience.
I’ve so enjoyed remembering the ‘artist’ part of being an artist-curator.
My solo exhibition, BACKBONE is a body of new paintings and textile assemblages.
Racism is Tiring (2023) | Textile assemblage | 900x1420mm
BACKBONE kicks off a season of solo shows at Vunilagi Vou here in East Tāmaki.
In late June, Papatoetoe-based painter, Niu Lemalu presents his second solo exhibition, Let’s Play Outide and in August, Ōtara-based interdisciplinary artist, Genevieve Pini presents her highly anticipated first solo, Muscle Memory.
Please help us to kick off a season of solos!
BACKBONE opens with a Private View / Opening on Thursday 27 April from 6-9pm and then runs until 10 June 2023.
Vunilagi Vou is open Thursday – Saturday from 10am – 2pm, and by appointment. Parking is available outside the main gate.
Vunilagi Vou is located at 14/15 Bishop Lenihan Place, East Tāmaki, South Auckland.
This month’s VV First Fridays event is a collaboration with Auckland-based Papua New Guinea squad, Nambis Events offering a skill-sharing opportunity in PNG beading!
Our VV First Fridays event series offers time and space on the first Friday of the month for Moana Pacific artists and communities to come together, break bread, build connections and get inspired.
Registration is required and spaces are limited for April’s event. Get in touch to register via email, hello@vunilagivou.com
Vunilagi Vou acknowledges the support of Creative New Zealand who have made the VV First Fridays event series possible.
With support from Creative New Zealand, Vunilagi Vou presented a salon of South Auckland at the 2023 Aotearoa Art Fair (2-5 March) at The Cloud on Auckland’s waterfront.
From opening night through to pack-down, we had a steady stream of visitors – many visiting the Aotearoa Art Fair for the first time, lots of artists, arts workers and appreciators from the Moana Pacific arts sectors and social networks, and a lot of new faces – folks encountering Vunilagi Vou for the first time.
It was great to be present in this space as a first-time booth-holder, and fascinating to see the working cogs of the Aotearoa art market through the lens of the Fair.
Gratitude to Mereia Carling, who spent a day transiting through Auckland, working the Vunilagi Vou booth! And to dear friend, exhibiting artist and non-stop Vunilagi Vou supporter, Nigel Borell, for working, talking, networking and Instagramming the booth for the duration of the event!
Last year we set the wheels in motion to present solo exhibitions by two South Auckland-based artists, Niu Lemalu and Genevieve Pini, here at Vunilagi Vou in 2023. Through the BoostedxMoana initiative (a partnership between Boosted [The Arts Foundation] and Creative New Zealand), we crowdfunded $10k to support the artists and the presentation of their new work.
Presenting work at the Aotearoa Art Fair was part of the process of preparing for their solos; we got to expand awareness for their practices, and gauge the ways audiences responded to their ideas. One of the best outcomes of the whole project was that both Niu and Genevieve sold their work at the Fair – an excellent endorsement and motivation in preparation for their solos.
It was also really wonderful to host members of both Niu and Genevieve’s families at the Fair. I’ve always enjoyed the ways family members talanoa about the artists in their lives. It’s gratifying to present the work of these artists within a wider context of the art market to illustrate a value system that they sit within.
Lemalu aigaGenevieve Pini + Niece
The Art Fair was a great focus for the first quarter of the year and at the end of April, we launch a season of solos at Vunilagi Vou that will take us through to October!
Vunilagi Vou’s stockroom is currently being re-hung to accommodate for some of the unsold works from the Art Fair, including some of Nigel Borell’s gorgeous works on paper, one of which was the Atomic Coffee Roasters annual commission.
Whilst the exhibitions programme doesn’t kick off until the end of April, the VV Stockroom is open Thursday – Saturday, 10am – 2pm, or via appointment.
In a gentle start to the year, Vunilagi Vou’s first VV First Fridays event is on Friday 3 February and tackles the topic of courage.
The VV First Fridays event series was supported in 2022 by Creative New Zealand as a means to build community amongst Moana Pacific artists and the wider creative ecology here in South Auckland. The series of 10 events take place on the first Friday of the month from February to November, a low-key creative social club to get inspired, motivated and thoughtful at the start of each month.
In February, Vunilagi Vou invites anyone interested to come and listen to two inspiring Fijian creative thinkers talking story about their experiences of courage; when it’s needed, how to harness it and where it comes from.
Mereia Carling and Gina Cole have both had careers that have moved between creative pursuits and high-level professional roles in the fields of regional development and law. Courage is something they’ve both discussed, encouraged and inspired in those they’ve worked with and served, but like everyone, it has also been something they’ve had to understand and harness in their personal lives.
This conversation about courage is less a TED-talk and more a story sharing space; how does a Fijian lawyer become a Taekwondo practising sci-fi writer dreaming of worlds of Pasifikafuturism? How does a graduate of a fashion and textiles design training in Bristol, England end up working in child rights across the Pacific, and painting portraits of ancestors in Wellington?
Sometimes, being around a conversation about courage is enough to shape, inspire and mobilise courageous acts.
Vunilagi Vou is proud to welcome guests for the first time in 2023 to meet two inspiring and courageous women, break bread, kick back and enjoy a hazy summer evening at VVxET in East Tāmaki on Friday 3 February – doors open at 6pm, all welcome!
Vunilagi Vou is located at Suite 14, 15 Bishop Lenihan Place, East Tāmaki, South Auckland – more details here.
Public parking is available outside the main gate; entrance to the compound is via pedestrian gates.
Refreshments provided.
The venue is wheelchair accessible, please get in touch to make special arrangements.
Mereia Carling
Mereia Carling is a Fijian with i-Taukei and Pākeha ancestry. Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, she has only lived in this country for three years, moving just before the pandemic – a journey of courage that took her to the sheer edge of sanity. Not the first one however, moving countries and changing careers – finding and following her destined path – has been and continues to be a journey of self-discovery, finding faith and the ancestors, and depths of courage she did not know she had. While she works a paid job that advances human rights for children and youth across Aotearoa New Zealand’s international development cooperation, she is an artist at heart. Qualified as a designer of fashion and textiles, she previously worked as an artist and designer before venturing into the development world. She has been writing her ‘story’ for the last 14 years to document her journey of courage, and has recently found enough life/work balance to start painting again.
Gina Cole
Gina Cole (Fijian, Pakeha) MNZM, writer, lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. She won Best First Book Award at the 2017 Ockham NZ Book Awards for her collection Black Ice Matter. Her work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in numerous publications. She has appeared at many writing festivals, conferences and residencies including Auckland Writers Festival, Same Same but Different LGBTQIA+ Writers Festival, CoNZealand World Science Fiction Online Conference, Brisbane Writers Festival, Michael King Writers Centre Established Pasifika Writer’s Residency, Iowa International Writers Residency, Sitka Island Institute Alaska Residency and Varuna Writers House Residency, Katoomba, Blue Mountains, Australia. She is a qualified barrister & solicitor and practised law for many years. She holds a Masters of Creative writing and PhD in Creative Writing and is an Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa. Gina has written two short film scripts for PISA Screen Fit. She also works as a background extra and has appeared in multiple film and television productions including The Rings of Power, One of Us is Lying, Sweet Tooth, The Wilds, Whina, Our Flag Means Death, Shortland Street, Brokenwood Mysteries and many others. Her science fiction fantasy novel Na Viro (Huia) is a work of Pasifikafuturism.
On Saturday 27 August2022, Vunilagi Vou’s newest site – VVxET – opens in East Tāmaki, South Auckland!
Instead of a traditional night time opening, VVxET will launch with an Open Day inviting the public to check out the new site, including the gorgeous stockroom and retail area, exhibition space and north-facing verandah!
VVxET is located on the edge of the Ōtara Stream
Tucked away at the back of the Botany South Business Estate at 15 Bishop Lenihan Place, East Tāmaki, the new Vunilagi Vou premises has a pretty fascinating whakapapa of art dealing and appreciation. Built in 2004, the owner of the building established the ground floor as a small art dealership called I Like Gallery. Run on an appointment-only basis, gallerist Richard Jeffery ONZM, designed a perfectly formed exhibition space with high spec lighting and clean sight lines. It was immediately obvious how good parties would have been in this space!
Of all the commercial leases in all of Manukau / South Auckland, it seems somewhat divinely guided that Vunilagi Vou has ended up here, in a ready-made gallery, on the edge of the Ōtara Stream just 3 kilometres away from Fresh Gallery Ōtara, where it all began 16 years ago!
Maka (2022), a mauri stone by Niuean artist, Chris van Doren
To launch the new exhibition space and ease back into exhibition-making after a 12 month hiatus, a collection of work has been assembled to represent Vunilagi Vou’s Moana Pacific arts community and two decades of professional practice and loving investment into Manukau / South Auckland art history.
The exhibition features recent and archival works by Nigel Borell, Ercan Cairns, Chris van Doren, Dr Sione Faletau, Antonio Filipo, Tanu Gago, Leilani Kake and Niutuiatua Lemalu.
Putiputi (2022) video still by Leilani Kake
The Vunilagi Vou stockroom is also full with works by Cypris Afakasi, David Garcia, Julia Mage’au Gray, Marcus Hipa, Rebecca Ann Hobbs & Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho, Sara Moana, Siliga David Setoga, Pati Solomona Tyrell, Manuha’apai Vaeatangitau and more!
The children’s book, The Legend of Tanovo and Tautaumolauby Kaliopate Tavola and Ema Tavola, in both English and Fijian, is now back in stock, alongside an eclectic collection of accessories, publications, patches and posters!
After this weekend’s Open Day, VVxET will be open Thursday to Saturday from 10am – 2pm, and by appointment.
VVxET Open Day is open to the public this Saturday 27 August from 10am until 6pm – all welcome!
Keep up to date on Vunilagi Vou activity via Instagram and Twitter.
Vunilagi Vou’s beautiful fourth site was almost ready to open to the public on Wednesday 17 August 2022 from 10am until 6pm but then I caught Covid!
Having opened three sites since 2019 with boozy evening events, this new site calls in a new era, so appropriately, Saturday 27 August offers the lunar energies of a New Moon!
The open day now taking place on Saturday 27 August 2022 is an open invite to the public to check out VVxET between 10am – 6pm. For anyone still around at 6pm, Bishop Lenihan Place in East Tāmaki is abuzz on Saturday nights; multiple Korean barbecue spots, Bubble tea houses (Hulucat and Wucha), Love Asia, 100 Spicy, Mui Japanese Restaurant all offer excellent options for cheap eats on a weekend in the Southside!
More details to come on an opening exhibition that eases Vunilagi Vou back into exhibition-making mode after a year out of the game, and more details on finding this unassuming little secret spot in semi-industrial East Tāmaki, South Auckland heartland!
What: Open Day for VVxET – Vunilagi Vou’s new East Tāmaki site
Where: Unit 14, Botany South Business Estate, 15 Bishop Lenihan Place, East Tāmaki, South Auckland
The Auckland region has been in Alert Level 4 lockdown for now over 30 days. An outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 has the potential to cause disproportionate havoc in South Auckland, where there are high concentrations of systemically disadvantaged communities, deprivation and overcrowded households. With daily reported numbers of positive cases now going down (ish) and vaccination numbers reportedly going up, there is some light at the end of this new tunnel that we all now live in.
As Aotearoa moved into snap lockdown in mid-August, Vunilagi Vou was on the verge of rolling out a Creative New Zealand-funded event series at The Alexander Cafe. The project itself was a pivoted concept developed to salvage a 2019 funded project that became pandemic unviable. The VVxAlexander Talanoa Series was intended to be four monthly talanoa events dedicated to unpacking some of the sector’s most urgent, problematic and pressing conditions, with a collective of incredibly inspiring Moana Oceania arts managers, thinkers and change-makers. With two of the proposed events in the series absorbed into and thus cancelled by Level 4 lockdown, and the proposed dates for the third and fourth events potentially impacted by heavy restrictions on gathering numbers and general and perceived risk of community transmission, it’s fair to say that the VVxAlexander Talanoa Series, in its current form, is a yet another pandemic casualty.
Resilience is a condition that can grow from this culture of producing. Events are more vulnerable than ever to being impacted by postponement, cancellations and often conceptual pivots; producing in the unpredictability of the pandemic climate requires a deep commitment, strong support systems and lot of gumption.
Vunilagi Vou was built with full reserves of those things back in 2019, but as a largely one-woman-led independent operation that exists in balance with the demands of solo parenting, the culture and climate of producing in 2021, has drained the tanks. Learning of the New Zealand Government’s investment in the creative and cultural sectors through the Ministry for Culture & Heritage Arts and Culture COVID Recovery Programme was at first encouraging, but seeing such vast quantities of that investment funnelled into already well-funded organisations, has been incredibly dispiriting.
There have been ways that some of those well-funded organisations have engaged independent practitioners and producers, like Vunilagi Vou, to effectively share resource and perform resilience collectively, but within the complexity of this power dynamic, there is unfortunately always room for exploitation.
The third event in the VVxAlexander Talanoa Series was entitled, The State of Art: Culture Shifts & the Pandemic and was scheduled to include celebrated curator Nigel Borell, and myself, alongside South Auckland-based analyst and commentator Shane Ta’ala. I was personally really looking forward to an evening of hot takes and real talk about the ways the pandemic climate has allowed our sector to breathe in conversations about race and inequality, sit with that discomfort, and try to breathe out old, tired norms. But like change itself, this conversation, complicated and difficult, will take a longer-term vision to manifest in real time.
Being in lockdown in the site of Vunilagi Vou 2.0 – the master pivot – it has become increasingly evident how taxing this climate of producing creative and cultural content and events has been over the past 18 months. Vunilagi Vou 2.0 was built in 2020 as a safe haven from the unknowns of the world outside of our homes. The dream of this space was born out of lockdown, when life outside was on pause. It was a way to create stability when nothing else seemed secure. But when the neighbouring land was sold earlier this year (along with two other single house lots recently sold), development of six two-storey townhouses began next door and the literal stability of this pandemic oasis was disrupted; a third Vunilagi Vou shapeshift was put in motion.
Vunilagi Vou’s partnership with Celebrate Aotearoa and The Alexander Cafe has been joyful and challenging, empowering and rewarding. This third shapeshift from a commercial shop in Ōtāhuhu to a converted garage in Papatoetoe, to a mezzanine floor in an Ōtara cafe, has been in so many ways, the best version of Vunilagi Vou.
As this small organisation grows and evolves, its business plan shifts and adjusts to the time and space it finds itself in. This constant flux is an exercise of detachment and strategy, survival and renewal. This mode is largely exhilarating, but requires a level of focus and commitment that is entirely dependent, in my experience, on childcare! As a solo parent, lockdown, unfortunately, has not presented the time and space to perform resilience and resourcefulness as an independent creative entity.
Whilst most projects and commitments have been extended, pushed out and evolved, some have been necessarily axed. One of the more disappointing outcomes of this has been the cancellation of our scheduled exhibition, The Spatial Expression of Economic Inequality for Artweek Auckland and the full withdrawal from the regional programme.
The future is still so frustratingly unknown; in the short-term, it’s whether Auckland will be able to go down in alert levels to ease at least some of the region’s economic, social, spiritual, cultural and culinary frustration. In the mid-term, whether start-up businesses like The Alexander Cafe, Celebrate Aotearoa and Vunilagi Vou are able to bounce back (again) from such an economic hiding. And in the long-term, it’s whether Vunilagi Vou, an audacious idea born in a pre-pandemic time and space, is sustainable or even viable, within both South Auckland’s rapidly shifting cultural landscape, and a pandemic.
During the past 30 days however, some things have been spirit lifting…
Hidden in Plain Sight curated by Julia Albrecht and Stephanie Endter closed at Frankfurt’s Weltkulturen Museum on 5 September featuring a body of work made in response to Vunilagi Vou’s 2019 exhibition, Lain Blo Yu Mi – Our People Our Lines and featuring a painting made for FATFEB(2021) which will soon be part of the museum’s permanent collection.
Sales have been trickling through from the VV Online Shop even though deliveries won’t be made until Auckland moves to Alert Level 3. Deep gratitude for these small gestures of support and investment. Vinaka vakalevu.
Work is currently in development for a deeply inspiring curatorial project led by Dr Torika Bolatagici entitled, Volume: Bodies of Knowledge. This research-based curatorial project emerges from a feminist phenomenological framework centering the lived experience of Indigenous, bla(c)k, brown, women-of-colour artists whose experiential knowledge through the body, informs their creative practice. To produce work for such a relevant and meaningful kaupapa, and to work within the realm of understanding of motherhood, is game-changing.
The lockdown re-alignment has offered an opportunity to reflect on the time and space that Vunilagi Vou’s first publication, VV:Duawas first conceived in 2020. The publication documenting Vunilagi Vou’s first year of operation was funded with support from Creative New Zealand’s Arts Continuity Grants programme and launched on Vunilagi Vou’s second anniversary in June of this year at The Alexander Cafe. The project presented steep learning curves but produced an important document about independent arts management and South Auckland. Although producing this book was a massive challenge, writing about Vunilagi Vou’s next chapter – shapeshifting and creative survival in chronic crisis – seems essential. Watch this space.
