This Is a Library – Curated By Hanahiva Rose

Update: Enjoy is closed to the public while New Zealand is in Covid-19 Alert Level 1. You can still experience This is a library online. Head to our website to view installation documentation, read Hanahiva's extended exhibition text, and learn more about the show.

In the early 1960s, Tibbo became one of the first contemporary Pacific artists to have work exhibited in dealer and public galleries in Aotearoa. She began painting at 71 and over the following decade worked consistently, experimenting with technique and form, and made a significant impression on her contemporaries—including Pat Hanly, Michael Illingworth and Tony Fomison. Her work is held in collections around the country and has been included in a number of significant exhibitions, including Polynesia in Auckland (Auckland Museum, 1996), Te Moemoeā no Iotefa (City Gallery Wellington, 1990), and Home AKL (Auckland Art Gallery, 2012).

Drawn from public and private collections for exhibition in This is a library, Tibbo’s work can be seen to foreshadow consistent themes in a new generation of artists: memory, place and the idea of home. Pataialii, Tanuvasa and Jowitt respond to Tibbo’s practice and legacy, creating conversation between generations of painters. Across each of the four artists runs an interest in the formal qualities of painting: in mark marking and media. They look to trouble genre and resist easy interpretation.

The exhibition draws its title from Jim Vivieaere’s video installation This is not an ocean, this is a rented house/this is not a hand, this is a library/this is not the sky, this is a grandfather clock/this is not a child, this is a mirror (2007). In referencing Vivieaere’s work, the exhibition seeks to acknowledge the long history of contemporary Pacific art and exhibition making in Aotearoa to which both he and Tibbo belong. This is a library is a space for connection to be established and influence shared.

Read more about the artists on the website.

Our sincere thanks to the collectors and collections who have loaned Teuane Tibbo’s work for exhibition.

Framing for this exhibition has been generously supplied by ElliotCreative. We’re grateful to Fortune Favours and Colere Wines for providing beer and wine for the opening of this exhibition.

Image: Teuane Tibbo, Opium Poppies, 1968. Collection of Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, Ōtepoti Dunedin.