This Is Us Here Now/ Anei Mātou

A collaborative community art project curated by Marita Hewitt and Teresa HR Lane

Kindly supported by The Turner Centre, Bay of Islands-Whangaroa Community Board and Far North Creative Communities

Calling All: Artists / Weavers / Carvers / Crafters / Creators / Teachers / Hobbyists /
Lovers of Life

We are inviting YOU, anyone from our wider Bay of Islands/ Whangaroa region, to collaborate with us, in creating an enormous textile collage banner, a portrait representative of US ALL.
A lively fabric & paper mash-up, of the found, treasured & repurposed, telling the story of who we are, here & now.
Participants are welcome to create contributions using either our provided resources, or to bring their own materials or projects along to a workshop.We’ll be utilising the used & unwanted, such as scrap fabrics, wool, or even paper. The banner will encompass varied creative cultural & crafted techniques including knitting, crochet, weaving, shashiko, patchwork, applique, macrame, collage and everything in between, of any size or shape – no rules!
We want you to play and experiment, learn and explore through making together.
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COME JOIN ONE OF OUR FREE WORKSHOPS OR WORK FROM HOME:
Thursday 10th October: 10:00 am – 3:00 pm (school holiday drop-in)

Online Zoom: Tuesday 15/10: 4-5pm live or recorded

Weds 16th October: 3.30 pm – 5.30 pm

Weds 23rd October: 3.30 pm – 5.30 pm

Weds 30th October: 3.30 pm – 5.30 pm

Kaeo Memorial Hall: Saturday 2/11: 1- 3pm

Weds 6th November: 3.30 pm – 5.30 pm

Kawakawa, Te Hononga: Saturday 9/11: 10-3pm

Weds 13th November: 3.30 pm – 5.30 pm

Russell Hall: Saturday 16/11: 10-3pm

Weds 20th November: 3.30 pm – 5.30 pm

Saturday 30th November: 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Exhibition Opening – 9th December: 5:00 PM

For more information and inspiration follow Instagram @thisisusherenow | Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ThisIsUsHereNow/ | Email thisisusherenow@gmail.com

Teresa HR Lane
Motivated by the immediate, the sublime and an abundant collection of carefully selected printed matter. Informed by the immediate landscape of absent forest, a silent birdcall and a naked land, Lane confounds expectations of the surreal figurative and abstract landscape by dismembering and reassembling information, using an intricate photographic mixed media collage practice, painting with paper, drawing with scissors. Lane received an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, 2017. Recipient of Akel Schulte Runner-up Award, Molly Morpeth Canaday Painting and Drawing Award 2019, finalist Estuary Arts Awards 2023, National Contemporary Art Award 2019 & Wallace Awards 2017. Included in public and private collections.

Marita Hewitt
Marita Hewitt’s series-based practice is driven by a circular ideology, where autobiographical content is utilised as both material and muse, transformed and loyally reproduced as a way to explore traces of human activity and questions of an existential nature. Clothing fragments, stained tea towels, old sheets or torn envelopes, packaging, curtains or receipts; have all featured as subjects, bearing notions of time, sustainability, motherhood and craft, Hewitt’s approach to making creates work of a quietly entropic, assiduous quality. Hewitt studied Visual Arts at AUT, major awards include 1st runner up in the Wallace Awards 2013, Merit in the Portage Award 2013, People’s Choice in the National Contemporary Art Awards 2018. She has attended residencies at both the Vermont Studio Centre, USA, and Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China. Her work is included in private and public collections throughout Aotearoa and abroad, her work is represented by James Blackie.