On the cusp of a new decade, a group of senior-level art students demonstrate what it means to create art in an environment no longer bound by rigid geographical notions of place. A large-scale multimedia exhibition opening at St Paul Street Gallery on 9 September and running until the 24th, Make/Shift will present the viewer with the exciting array of art that is being produced by Auckland’s Pacific innovators throughout the city’s five tertiary institutions.
Curator Nina Tonga says that owing to globalisation, the Pacific identity has become increasingly interconnected across traditional geographical boundaries, and these artists’ work provides an insight into art-making practices in a ‘post-colonial, post-migration, post-facebook world’, where the ‘wide parameters of Pacific tertiary art are . . . no longer bound to geographical notions of place.’
The exhibition, the third annual tertiary exhibition organised by Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust, will also look at how art is produced within the confines of the economic realities of student life, as well as the restraints that tertiary assessment presents in terms of criteria and timeframes.
The line-up features some of the most dynamic and fresh artists to emerge out of the tertiary sector: Luke Willis Thompson, Mele ’Uhamaka, Ane Tonga, Tony Tia, Caroline Cotter, Victoria Patea, Vaimoana Eves, Selina Woulfe, Chloe Marsters and Nastashia Simeona.
These artists will be available for interview.
For more information or to organise an interview with one or all
of the artists, please contact:
Christina Jeffery
Trust Manager
Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust
PO Box 68 339, Newton, Auckland 1145
manager@tautai.org | 09 376 1665 | 021 373 402
www.tautai.org
Prepared on behalf of Tautai by Tessa King, freelance writer
tessaroseking@hotmail.com | 021 022 85602