EXHIBITIONS
Upcoming Exhibition
before we learn to talanoa
Lily Aitui Laita and Ululau Ama
8 Aug - 20 Sep, 2025
Opening night - 8 Aug, 6 to 8pm
Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust, L1, 300 Karangahape Rd, Auckland
Summary
before we learn to talanoa brings together a selection of works by the late artist and educator Lily Aitui Laita, and Māpura Studios artist Ululau Ama.
With her characteristically expressive style of painting Lily Aitui Laita has achieved widespread success and recognition over her prolific exhibiting career spanning 25 years. Graduating from the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1990 as its first Pacific woman graduate, it was never her intention to create a legacy, but the reality is her vast and enduring influence paved the way for others like herself. Laita considered art as a bodily function, a continuation of play that is a primal form of communication, even before we learn to talanoa.
Ululau Ama carries that same spirit forward. A visual storyteller, art is how Ama communicates. His works are sometimes figurative, and sometimes textural and expressionistic, the colours of which reference what is going on around him – always in flux. Both artists with their abstracted subjects explore an ambiguous sense of space and time, communicate their interactions, dreams, mythology, journeys and notions of intuitive and learned knowledge. In this way, they showcase just how art can become a vehicle for discussion and discourse all the while representing the ability to enjoy freely.
Laita, L. (1998) So youre not an import. [Acrylic, alkyd, and oil on black builder's paper]![Ama, U. (2022) Fale. [Acrylic and pastel on paper]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d394e0473f6519fb4fed3b/b27603e4-1707-4742-9ce1-84742d4cd5f4/Ama%2C+U.+%282022%29+Fale.+%5BAcrylic+and+pastel+on+paper%5D.png)
Ama, U. (2023) Fale. [Acrylic and pastel on paper]Artists
Ululau Ama was born in 1994 in Sāmoa. He had meningitis at 3 months old and was later diagnosed with epilepsy. Ululau has attended Art Therapy classes and is currently an artist at Māpura Studios. Ululau’s work includes drawing, printmaking, poetry, music, painting and sculpture. He is a visual storyteller, with his Pacific identity weaving through all his art, and many of his works are based on Samoan mythology. In 2022 Ululau was awarded the Creative New Zealand Pacific Toa Award and has been a finalist in the IHC Art Awards numerous times. Three of Ululau’s paintings were included in the ArtPara Shine Together exhibition at the OECD Headquarters in Paris on the occasion of the 2024 Paralympics. The exhibition comprised of disability art from 27 countries and this was the first time New Zealand was included.
Lily Aitui Laita (1969-2023) was an artist and educator of Sāmoan, Māori (Ngāti Raukawa) and Pākehā descent. She was the Head of Art at Western Springs where she served faithfully for over three decades. The first ever Pacific woman to graduate from Elam School of Fine Arts in 1990, she was also a founding member of Tautai Pacific Arts Trust. Exhibiting since the 1990s, Lily has shown work prolifically across Aotearoa and beyond, including London, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, Melbourne and New Caledonia. Lily worked collaboratively with artists Niki Hastings-McFall and Lonnie Hutchinson as the VaHine Collective, formed in 2002. Her work is known for its combination of vibrant abstraction and language.
Past Exhibitions
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Borne and Bred
Linda Va’aelua
9 May - 5 Jul 2025
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Selau Pasege
George Funaki, Jasmine Tuiā, Jimmy Ma’ia’i
14 Feb - 5 Apr 2025
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A Seat at the Table
Teuila Fatupaito, Latamai Katoa, Sisi Panikoula, Brett Taefu, and Daedae Tekoronga-Waka.
Dec 5 – Dec 20 2024
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Solesolevaki
Solesolevaki, initiated by artist-curator Vasemaca Tavola, explores the concept of solesolevaki as a tool to enable connection and intergenerational cultural transmission, across four generations of one family. Featuring works by Lanuola Mereia Aniseko, Ella Carling, Tiana Carling, Mereia Carling, Mereia Sauvukivuki, Helen Tavola, Kaliopate Tavola and Vasemaca Tavola. Exhibition design by Christian Carling.
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When it Feels Over
Christopher Ulutupu
TAUTAI Pacific Arts Trust, in collaboration with CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image, is pleased to present Leave room for Jesus... (2023) and The Pleasures of Unbelonging (2023) moving image work by Christopher Ulutupu.
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Grasping the Horizon
Cora-Allan Lafaiki Twiss
In this exhibition Cora-Allan Lafaiki Twiss’ connection to the black lines of her ancestors are opened wider with a range of new patterns and new hiapo compositions.
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Good Hair Day
Good Hair Day curated by Luisa Tora explores urban narratives around hair. Featuring artists Bali Buliruarua, Māia Piata Rose Week, Nââwié Tutugoro, Karlin Morrison Raju and Peter Seeto Wing.
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Titiro ki muri, kia whakatika ā mua | Look to the past to proceed to the future
Coinciding with the Hōteke (winter) holidays, this programme has been organised by Hana Pera Aoake and Tautai Pacific Arts Trust.
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Queen Fiapoto: switch, code, reverse
Queen Fiapoto: switch, code, reverse is an exercise of agency by 5 young Samoan women. The multidisciplinary project is presented by the sugaz of Malae/Co.
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The Last Kai
The Last Kai exhibition cleverly uses familiar religious iconography from within Pacific homes to bring up current discussions around women’s representation and the role of Christianity in the modern Pacific household.
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683 Baby xo
683 Baby xo examines the complexities of being New Zealand-born Niueans, craving that connection to their Niuean heritage while acknowledging their perspective as diaspora youth. Featuring work by Dahlina Taueu, Quentin Tauetau-Tohitau and Kordell Cameron.
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Taputapu Ātea
Taputapu Ātea is an installation of new paintings and digital works that explore the artificially intelligent future of our culture’s materialisation.
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Haus of Memories
Haus of Memories is a multidisciplinary residency project led by Studio Kiin that explores and gathers fragments of how we archive and draw upon memory to honour our future past.
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lean into the pain: archive of a tatau thesis
Award-winning producer and sound artist Anonymouz presents a deeply personal multimedia exhibition that explores his thesis on the Indigenous practice of tatau being an analogue metaphor, philosophy and framework for lived experience.
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The Water Tastes Different Here
In*ter*is*land Collective, a misfit collection of queer, moana artists and activists based in London, UK and in Aoteraoa New Zealand, present their first exhibition in Aotearoa at Tautai Gallery.
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Toitū Te Moana
Hawaiki, the ancestral homeland, is the beginning point for Toitū Te Moana, and the place from which the artists’ mātauranga, their knowledge, descends.
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Oh My Ocean
Curated by Nigel Borrell, this exhibition includes work by Rawiri Brown, Fa’amele Etuale, Ioane Ioane, Elisabeth Kumaran, Sani Muliaumaseali’i, Michel Mulipola, Iata Peautolu, Keva Rands and Chris Van Doren.
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Moana Waiwai Moana Pāti
Moana Waiwai Moana Pāti celebrates the diversity of Pacific creatives, and includes film, digital image-making, painting, tatau, poetic prose, sonic landscapes and performance.
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Voyagers: The Niu World
Combining pieces created during Aotearoa’s lockdown and new work, this exhibition aims to tap into the spirit of the great explorers of the Pacific, consulting the stars and charting a course into the wild blue expanse.
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Saltwater / INTERCONNECTIVITY
Tautai Gallery is transformed to embody the Moana / Solwara worldview
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Moana Wall
The 70m hoardings were transformed into the MOANA WALL using the existing infrastructure as a canvas that highlights contemporary Pasifika artists and celebrates the diverse community of Karangahape Road.
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Moana Legacy
Tautai’s first exhibition in its new gallery space, the show was developed from an existing partnership with Blak Dot Gallery, Naarm (Melbourne) featuring Tagata Moana artists working in both Aotearoa and Australia.
