Stars start falling

Stars start falling
22 May — 15 Aug 2021

'Stars start falling' brings together existing and newly commissioned works by Teuane Tibbo, Ani O’Neill and Salome Tanuvasa, many seen here in public for the first time.

It was a dream that the stars were falling that prompted Teuane Tibbo to begin painting in the 1960s, subsequently quickly rising to prominence in Auckland’s art scene. She worked prolifically through the 1960s and ’70s, painting scenes of her youth in Sāmoa from photographs and memories, and still lifes of flowers plucked from her garden.

'Stars start falling' puts Tibbo’s paintings from the ’60s and ’70s into conversation with work made by Ani O’Neill in 1999 and new commissions by Salome Tanuvasa, stretching more than fifty years of artistic practice. The artists’ shared sensitivity toward the conditions under which, and locations where, art is made gives a complex view of the shifting landscape of Pacific life in Aotearoa over the last half century.

A space to dream, a space to remember, a space to work, a space to make connections. Stars start falling brings together work that examines processes of memory, learning, and knowledge as responses to the artists’ engagement with the everyday and the extraordinary. Made in the garden, around the kitchen table, in a moment stolen in the dark of night, or as the duties of domestic life continue to tick along in the background, the artworks in this exhibition examine the cultural, social, and political imaginations that shape our relationship to place.