Vaiei Tupuna
Ticket Information
Restrictions
Website
Listed by
Vaiei Tupuna: Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery in collaboration with Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Vaiei Tupuna is an exhibition of contemporary tapa from across Moana Nui that brings together newly commissioned responses to taonga from the collections of Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection and The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, alongside historic and contemporary artworks that acknowledge the tupuna and atua who activate this practice. Gifted by Sarah Vaki, elder and master tapa maker from Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas, the title of the exhibition translates as “heritage of our ancestors”. Vaiei Tupuna takes up these shared genealogies and histories of tapa to celebrate the vitality of the artform in the present, and to extend and build knowledge for the future. Hina, the atua of tapa makers, is present throughout Vaiei Tupuna.
The exhibition features three component parts:
Hala Kafa, 2024, is a new commission by ‘Uhila Moe Langi Nai, and the result of an earlier invitation from Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery to engage with a Tongan tapa, in its collection. Gifted to Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington by the University of the South Pacific in 1999, this tapa known as a ngatu tāhina is notable for its ceremonial scale, which, at over 24 metres, wrapped the length of the gallery upon its display in 2023. Finding in the ngatu tāhina a kupesi pattern inherited from her grandmother, Nai has conceived of her response as an iteration of its original gift. In Tonga, to gift koloa is a sign of respect. Hala Kafa transposes the horizontal scale of the ngatu tāhina into six vertical lengths, and its hand-beaten kupesi into stylised, rhythmic forms, returning koloa to its original, anonymous makers.
‘Ahu: Ngā Wairua o Hina is the name of a wānanga held in Tahiti in late 2023, for which eleven tapa makers were invited by Te Papa to engage with and respond to a tapa sampler collated by bookseller Alexander Shaw in 1787. This wānanga was hosted by Te Fare Iamanaha Musée de Tahiti et des Îles. Over the course of the wānanga, artists Cora-Allan, Dalani Tanahy, Doron Semu, Hinatea Colombani, Liviana Qaranivalu, Nikau Hindin, Pauline Reynolds, Sarah Vaki, Sue Pearson, Sulieti Fieme’a Burrows and Tui Emma Gillies put together a portfolio of contemporary tapa. Each contributed their own imagining of a living relationship to the tapa in the sampler, producing three works that represented ideas of the past, present and future. The pieces were then brought together in two ‘bundles’, one returning to Te Papa and the other gifted to Te Fare Iamanaha. Installed throughout the Lower Chartwell Gallery, Te Papa’s bundle has been unpacked and displayed for the first time, shown with copies of Shaw’s tapa sampler from collections throughout Aotearoa.
Alongside these projects, Hina Sings… is an iterative collaboration between Pauline Reynolds and Sue Pearson, two of the artists who also attended the wānanga. It comprises ancestral tīputa and hei dedicated to Hina, as well as an example of 'ahufara tapa made from aute plants grown in Whakatāne. In the Kirk Gallery, Hina’s Granddaughters, 2022, is an immersive experience of poetry, song and moving image, and projects the film made by the artists with their children onto a screen of 'ahu. A collaboration between artists, makers, institutions, and curators, Vaiei Tupunua asserts the enduring wairua of tapa’s ancestors, and present and future practitioners.
Curated by Sophie Thorn and Rosalie Koko, Te Pātaka Toi; Isaac Te Awa and Rebecca Rice, Te Papa Tongarewa; and Nālani Wilson-Hokowhitu, Va'aomanū Pasifika.
Image: Tui Emma Gillies, Feke, 2023, mixed media and natural pigment on ngatu sphere, Collection of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, commissioned 2023.
People who liked this also checked out these events
Log in / Sign up
Continuing confirms your acceptance of our terms of service.
Post a comment