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Fiji Day and na gauna vou – a new beginning

Last month was Fiji Day – the anniversary of Fiji’s independence from British colonial rule celebrated on October 10th. In Aotearoa, the government advocates for Pacific Island language weeks to raise awareness and promote language learning, retention and the role of our Pacific languages in the ways that culture is practiced, sustained and celebrated. Fijian Language Week happens in the week surrounding Fiji Day, and Fijian cultural practices and basic vocabulary is used enthusiastically across schools, organisations and media platforms that care about the inclusion and visibility of Fijian language, culture and Fijian communities in Aotearoa.

Fijian Language Week has been a week-long programme of celebrations and events that I’ve been involved in for many years. It’s a way to use the added visibility and awareness to put a spotlight on important issues and kaupapa raised by Fijian artists. But there are frustrations with the tokenism inevitable with a week-long burst of attention and care. For many communities involved in promoting resilience for Pacific language, culture and arts, the work happens all year long, and whilst a week of spotlighting has some benefits, it feels almost counter-productive sometimes to filter all efforts into a week of celebration where popular attention quickly diverts to the next language in focus.

The short timeframe of week-long celebrations of Pacific language also means that the vocabulary popularly shared rarely expands beyond basic beginner level communication, and thus the depth of understanding – year on year – doesn’t seem to evolve much.

Thirsty for more depth, this year, with Fijian Language Week falling in the week of Aotearoa’s General Election, Vunilagi Vou published a series of daily Fijian language concepts developed with Vunilagi Vou Co-Director, Kaliopate Tavola. The vocabulary and phrasing were developed in relation to the political climate, concepts of leadership and Vunilagi Vou’s imminent new beginnings. For each concept, an image was selected from Vunilagi Vou’s archive and library of Fijian titles.

This iconic image shows Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara wearing the traditional Fijian dress for the vakataraisulu (lifting of mourning) ceremonies for Adi Arieta Koila at Lakeba, 1955. The image has found a new popularity on the Internet, but was borrowed here from The Pacific Way: A Memoir by Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, published by University Hawai’i Press (1997).

This image is me (Ema) in-between my siblings – Mereia and George – in London in the 1980s when my sister performed a meke (traditional dance performance) at Buckingham Palace. Here, we thought about the family unit as a microcosm of leadership, a process of inter-dependent independence.

Hope was a heavy theme in the week approaching Election Day. This image is from the Dravuni: Sivia yani na Vunilagi – Beyond the Horizon project that my father and I co-curated in 2016 for the New Zealand Maritime Museum. It shows my father facilitating one of the drawing workshops (designed by Leilani Kake) with children from Dravuni, our island in Kadavu, Fiji.

This image is of an oil painting by my sister, Mereia Carling, depicting Bulou Rokowati, our protector ancestor as she imagines her, “sitting on the shores of Dravuni island, below the shade of the breadfruit trees, draped in rich brown masi (barkcloth), our manumanu (bird), [the] secala (kingfisher) appearing, with her two ketekete (woven baskets) resting nearby.” This painting was made in Wellington, but lives part time with my parents in Paekākāriki, and part-time with me in South Auckland. Bulou’s protective gaze has extended over three Dravuni households.

The final image speaks directly to Vunilagi Vou’s inspiration – the vunilagi (horizon) as seen from Dravuni island. The rising and setting of the sun became the central concept of Vunilagi Vou; the idea that exhibitions, projects, and actual galleries, have a beginning and an end. Here, time is circular, and after death there is always re-birth.

Next month, after four years and 19 exhibitions, Vunilagi Vou’s gallery – the public programming side of the business – will close. With more time and energy for other parts of Vunilagi Vou’s work, 2024 is looking like an exciting year of art making, writing, research and advocacy.

I am looking forward to Vunilagi Vou’s new beginning – na gauna vou.

vinaka vakalevu

Exhibitions, Talanoa, VV First Fridays

Muscle Memory, an art history of South Auckland

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.

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.

Check out Genevieve Pini and sister Jacinda Pini and the making of their entries into Culture Couture on FreshTV

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.

vinaka vakalevu

Community, Events, Exhibitions

Vunilagi Vou: A Spring Update

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.

For Niu Lemalu works available in the Vunilagi Vou Stockroom – get in touch for a works list.

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.

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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Celebrate Aotearoa | Gift Store (@celebrate_aotearoa)

It was another privilege to speak and write about another Moana Oceania Pacific art practice that I’ve appreciated for such a long time.

This month, I’ve been busy making artwork again as a recipient of Tautai Trust’s annual Fale-Ship residency programme:

https://fb.watch/nFE1y5iPr5/

More about the outcome of this small residency opportunity coming soon.

And later on this month, we open our last exhibition for 2023, Muscle Memory – a solo exhibition by Genevieve Pini!

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.

More to say, watch this space.

vinaka vakalevu

Exhibitions

MUSCLE MEMORY – A solo exhibition by Genevieve Pini

In the last solo exhibition of this year’s ‘Season of Solos’, Ōtara-based artist Genevieve Pini presents a body of new work that has been on a slow-boil for two decades.

Muscle Memory is the outcome of Vunilagi Vou’s BoostedxMoana crowdfunding effort from late 2022. The project saw two South Auckland artists – Niu Lemalu and Genevieve Pini – develop solo exhibition exhibitions throughout 2023, and show for the first time at the Aotearoa Art Fair.

Genevieve Pini’s visual arts practice draws on training in photography, jewellery, print and textiles. Whilst studying at Manukau School of Visual Arts in Ōtara, Pini received her malu (customary Sāmoan female tattoo), an experience and visual vocabulary that has had an enduring impact on her life and work. Blood, bloodlines and genealogical connection have carried through much of her making, often employing the colour red and in some works, the actual material used to wipe blood and ink from her tattoos.

Interested in meditative processes, adornment and making as a mode of cultural transmission, Pini has exhibited in group exhibitions since 2004, often reflecting on the idea of protection, strength and the everyday ways that Sāmoa is present in people, ritual, time and space.

Muscle Memory is Pini’s first solo exhibition, a significant and daunting project. The process of development has involved lengthy talanoa about what experiences in our lives form memory, and how those memories are held in our bodies, actions and behaviours. The title also speaks to Pini’s active dedication to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a wellbeing practice that conditions her body and mind.

Vunilagi Vou is proud to present Muscle Memory to close out the 2023 programme.

Please join us for the Muscle Memory exhibition opening from 6-9pm on Wednesday 25 October 2023.

Artwork for Sale

Let’s Play Outside – New work by Niu Lemalu

Please join us to celebrate the re-start of Vunilagi Vou’s 2023 season of solos programme after an unplanned hiatus!

On Wednesday 30 August, we welcome guests to Vunilagi Vou to celebrate the opening of an exhibition of new paintings by Sāmoan painter, Niu Lemalu.

OPENING: 6pm, Wednesday 30 August 
EXHIBITION DATES: 31 August - 14 October 2023

VUNILAGI VOU
Suite 14 / 15 Bishop Lenihan Place
East Tāmaki
South Auckland

+ Parking outside the main gate and on Bishop Lenihan Place

GALLERY OPENING HOURS: 10am - 2pm, Thurs - Sat
+ Viewing by appointment any other time
APPOINTMENTS: hello@vunilagivou.com

Let’s Play Outside has been produced with support from Boosted x Moana donors and Creative New Zealand.

Enquiries

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A postponed programme + the realities of being a one-woman gallery

Today, we were scheduled to open South Auckland-based Sāmoan painter, Niu Lemalu’s solo exhibition, Let’s Play Outside. The exhibition project, that has been supported with last year’s BoostedxMoana crowdfunding effort, has been a joy to curate. Niu started making a new body of work at the end of last year and has been working solidly since then. He showed two new paintings in Vunilagi Vou’s Aotearoa Art Fair booth, which offered us excellent insights to where his work sits in the wider contemporary art landscape.

Niu Lemalu and Genevieve Pini’s solo shows were programmed to run back-to-back with my own solo, Backbone, opening up Vunilagi Vou’s ‘season of solos’ in April.

Whilst Backbone was opened and closed without disruption, and a really lovely way to break in the gallery for 2023, I found out that I’m needing to have a fairly major surgery in July, so our ‘season of solos’ programme has hit a small obstacle and is being pushed out by two months.

Such is life for a one-woman operation; there are no staffing back-ups for Vunilagi Vou, so major gratitude to Niu and Genevieve for rolling with the punches. Gratitude also to everyone who has offered support, kindness and advice as we navigate these unknown waters.

Our new dates are now confirmed, and opening Niu’s solo, Let’s Play Outside will now feel like even more of a milestone!

Genevieve Pini’s new exhibition dates are also confirmed as 26 October – 10 December 2023 – her first ever solo, Muscle Memory will be a beautiful exhibition project to round out a big year!

The VV First Fridays event series will also be on hold for August. But July’s event is going to be a goody! Inspired by recent political rhetoric amongst New Zealand’s right-wing parties denouncing the existence of systemic racism and White Privilege in New Zealand health system, we are turning political rage (slash disbelief) into beautiful expressions of visual resistance.

Inspired by the Reap What You Sew (2017) project by US artist, Stephanie Syjuco and her excellent free resource, “Making Protest Banners: Tips + Tricks”, Vunilagi Vou is excited to hold space for some experimentation, talanoa and inspiration.

Materials + snacks provided, and assistance from excellent Tongan designer and textile artist, Czarina Wilson.

Registration is open to Moana artists and communities, and those from our creative and cultural ecologies: click here to secure a spot.

I’m excited to be speaking next week at the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Arts Educators conference in Wellington. Perhaps especially meaningful because the venue for my presentation is Wellington High School, where I had powerful and transformative experiences as a student who only really enjoyed going to art classes. I’ll be discussing some of the wider philosophies of Vunilagi Vou in a paper entitled, Holding Space for Decolonisation in South Auckland.

*Vunilagi Vou sits on the edge of this pocket of environmentally protected wetlands in East Tāmaki, South Auckland.*

Whilst it’s wind-down time in preparation for surgery, I’m focused on the other side of recovery and look forward to sharing space with folx in late August and onwards.

Events, Exhibitions

BACKBONE kicks off a season of solos at Vunilagi Vou x East Tāmaki

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.

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.

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.

Artwork for Sale, Events

VV x Aotearoa Art Fair

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.

It was a privilege to present new, recent and archival work by Nigel Borell, Dr Sione Faletau, Leilani Kake, Niu Lemalu, Genevieve Pini and Leilani Kake, alongside an historic portrait by Johanna Van Massop.

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.

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.