Genevieve Pini

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.

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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, 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.

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Half way there, half way to our goal!

There is something very satisfying about being at the halfway mark of our four week crowdfunding campaign and sitting on 50% of our target of $10k…

Satisfying, and filled with gratitude, but slightly daunted about the prospect of raising the remaining $5k in 14 days. Can we do it? Can we do it with your help??

As has been shared throughout this campaign, this project is not filled with ‘knowns’. The outcome of Genevieve Pini and Niu Lemalu’s solo exhibitions is yet to be developed; this fund will enable them the time and space, support and materials to get to that point.

Genevieve and Niu are both relatively unknown in the wider awareness of Moana Pacific artists; in both cases, most of the creative work has happened in South Auckland, within grassroots settings, or within exhibitions that I’ve curated. Genevieve is a multiple award-winner from what was our annual design competition, Villa Maria Cult Couture and was profiled on Fresh TV here, and I featured three of Niu’s paintings in a pop-up exhibition series I made in 2015 called the PIMPI Winter Series; his interview was the most popular page on the website offering excellent insights to the mind of this painter, check it out here. In fact, both Genevieve and Niu made work for the PIMPI Winter Series in 2015, which I discussed on Radio New Zealand here.

I’ve had faith and been excited by both Genevieve and Niu’s art practices for almost 20 years. Niu made his first solo show at Fresh Gallery Ōtara when he was only 21 years old; Genevieve and I first met at Manukau School of Visual Arts in 2002 aged 19. It is this depth of familiarity, of knowing, that gives me total faith that this investment will enable them both to bring exciting, post-pandemic, deeply marinated ideas to the table… and I can’t wait to see what is produced!

I’ve asked some peers to help endorse this project’s kaupapa, and Ōtara-based artist and educator Leilani Kake offered a moving message about the importance of making solo shows here, and celebrated curator Nigel Borell MNZM, offered an insight about my curatorial practice and the act of making shows in South Auckland here. This week across social media, I published another testimonial by another award-winning peer, Tanu Gago MNZM – check it out below. I’m so grateful to this community of practice that surrounds Vunilagi Vou, and every project we produce and artist we work with.

Tanu mentions one thing at the beginning of this video that is sometimes not easy to really articulate. The act of curating Tanu Gago’s first solo shows wasn’t just because I had total faith in him, his visual language and what he had to say (as I do with Niu and Genevieve), but that curating his work was an act of fortifying a time and space for him in the art world, and in the case of Tanu, a time and space that became a launchpad for a tremendous trajectory.

The intention when curating Moana Pacific artists into exhibitions, whether group or solo endeavours, is never about the pursuit of fame, sales or fortune, but always about enabling artists to see themselves in a wider art world that mostly doesn’t look or sound like us. As a curator, my role has always been to enable artists to feel their voices are valid and important. To be affirmed, and know that someone is listening and hyping you, to know that you don’t stand alone, and that imposter syndrome can always be countered when we move together.

In essence, this crowdfunding effort is about more than two solo exhibitions. The donations and support from our communities so far has already shown these two artists the belief people have in what they do and what they will do. It is that investment that I know will have the most powerful impact on them, today and into the future. That shift in feeling supported, valid and worthy of investment is what will create some really powerful work in 2023.

Hitting our $10k target will enable all this good stuff to happen with a bit more ease. In the case of both artists, applying for CNZ arts grant investment has never really felt like an option. The process itself is a barrier, the competition for funds is aggressive, and as Nigel Borell states in his video, making art is so often a 3rd, 4th even 5th priority for working folx.

As a curator who is interested in the power and potential of sometimes the quietest voices, and a curator who has seen artists grow and flourish in abundant, art history shifting ways, I hope the next two weeks can show us how much faith our communities can generate for not only these two excellent artists, but also Moana Pacific curating as a mode of service and of decolonisation.

Please consider donating today!

Vinaka vakalevu!

Uncategorised

Two Solos seeking investment via #BoostedxMoana

It’s high season for hustle!

Vunilagi Vou has the privilege of participating in the 2022 BoostedxMoana initiative delivered in partnership between Boosted – Aotearoa’s dedicated arts project crowdfunding platform backed by The Arts Foundation – and Creative New Zealand.

In 2020, 118 donors helped us raise over $12k to support exhibition delivery at Vunilagi Vou 2.0 and The Alexander Cafe. With the massive disruptions that the pandemic caused in 2021, that investment was a life-line and kept the cogs turning in and out of lockdown lulls. Those funds supported exhibitions by Vea and Emily Mafile’o, Antonio Filipo, David Garcia, Peatree and Jeremiah Tauamiti.

This year, working now from a beautiful new premises in East Tāmaki, South Auckland, and after a short hiatus in between spaces, it’s all go for 2023!

Our BoostedxMoana project is simply called Two Solos. It is a project to support, nurture and hold space for the development of two solo exhibitions by two South Auckland-based artists – Genevieve Pini and Niu Lemalu.

Whilst Genevieve has been practicing for almost two decades, and Niu for one, neither artist has ever applied for Creative New Zealand funding; their practices have been entirely self-funded. Both have mainly shown in South Auckland, and both work full-time in non-creative sector jobs.

Making a solo exhibition takes commitment, resource, encouragement and confidence. It takes people, perhaps a curator or gallerist, to see untapped potential in an artist, and in an ideal situation, support them to manifest an idea, refining it, shaping it and presenting it to an audience.

This crowdfunding effort centres the process of supported artistic development, and the nuanced space that is held between Moana Pacific artists, and a Moana Pacific curator, in a Moana Pacific gallery. Both Genevieve and Niu will develop their ideas with support, talanoa and guidance with the community of practice that surrounds Vunilagi Vou.

The time and space this Two Solos project funding will enable will allow both artists to see their work within a wider creative ecology. Their solo shows will be significant markers in their broader creative practices, that have the potential to move in new and exciting directions when supported in ways that are culturally, politically and socially informed.

We are looking to raise NZ$10,000 to support the development, material costs, gallery overheads and artist fees to produce these two solo exhibitions in 2023 and Creative New Zealand is committed to match funding up to $3,000.

Without operational funding in 2023, Vunilagi Vou’s curatorial programme will be made up of individually funded projects like this Two Solos project. There is a certain freedom to this in that the gallery can shapeshift to meet different needs. If funds are secured to support Niu and Genevieve’s solo shows, Vunilagi Vou could transform short-term into a working studio to meet the needs of much-needed space required to make and experiment, plan and think.

I’ve shared with Genevieve and Niu that this Two Solos project will be the fourth crowdfunding campaign I’ve led and the feeling of being backed by your community is like nothing else. Crowdfunding is hard work, and can be challenging for many reasons; you have to believe that your work is worth investment, and that’s why I’m here, holding space for these two artists, who have never seen applying for arts funding as an option. They are 100% worth the investment and I’ve seen that time and time again in the work they have produced for shows I’ve made over the years.

I am so excited to see them both keen and committed to making solo exhibitions in 2023. Your investment will have a powerful and transformative impact on two excellent artists with untapped potential – please do consider donating!

Our Two Solos crowdfunding campaign runs until Thursday 17 November 2022 – please help us spread the word, amplify the quiet excellence of these two artists and help Vunilagi Vou hold space for two awesome new shows in 2023!