HIRIA ANDERSON
RUSS FLATT
STAR GOSSAGE
BRETT GRAHAM
AYESHA GREEN (courtesy Jhana Millers Gallery)
NIKAU HINDIN
PĀNiA! (courtesy Mokopōpaki)
FIONA PARDINGTON (courtesy Starkwhite)
Director Tim Melville explains the genesis of the gallery’s 2020 opening exhibition, Release the Stars.
“When photographer Dr Fiona Pardington (Ngai Tahu, Kati Mamoe, Ngati Kahungunu, Clan Cameron of Erracht) selected Ayesha Green’s painting Nana’s Birthday (A Big Breath) as the winner of the 2019 Waikato Contemporary Art Award I had a reaction to the artwork that caught me by surprise.
Nana’s Birthday (A Big Breath) showed mokopuna with a range of skin colours helping their Great-Grandmother blow out her Birthday candles, summarising, as Pardington remarked, “a long life of nurturing and the simple life shared by families everywhere”. Ayesha Green herself (Kaai Tahu, Ngati Kahungunu) described it as “an exhale of generations [referencing] the infinity of whakapapa and the creation legend of Tāne breathing life into the first woman”. Green’s painting was a cross-cultural mash-up in terms of both style and content. It featured neither koru nor kowhaiwhai yet its Maori wairua was unmistakeable. It slammed me in the heart and it made me wonder. Who are some of the other Maori artists whose work feels Maori but doesn’t always look Maori? Who are some of the others whose practice doesn’t necessarily include the iconography that many understand as signifying ‘authentic’ Maori art? And if you were able to put some of these artists together what might an exhibition look like?
TMG artists STAR GOSSAGE (Ngati Wai, Ngati Ruanui), RUSS FLATT (Ngati Kahungunu) and HIRIA ANDERSON (Rereahu, Ngati Maniapoto, Ngati Apakura) were immediately interested when we talked about it. I hoped that FIONA PARDINGTON and AYESHA GREEN would say yes, and they did. Emboldened, I approached BRETT GRAHAM (Ngati Koroki Kahukura, Tainui), NIKAU HINDIN (Ngapuhi, Te Rarawa) and the anonymous artist PĀNiA! and was thrilled to get their agreement also. We had a show.
The exhibition’s title Release the Stars comes from a 2007 Rufus Wainwright album inspired – the musician explains – by a wish to start “opening up and following impulses” and by “the fact that it’s time to get out there and be part of the solution”. Wainwright’s goals resonated with me. After 12 years Tim Melville Gallery is finding its voice and, despite having much still to learn, I feel a responsibility as a Maori gallerist (Te Arawa, Te Atiawa) to try and represent a Maori world-view to our predominantly European audience of friends and supporters. How can we build bridges? How can we encourage connection? And, going further, how can we explore and celebrate indigenous relationships within Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa and with our Iwi Moemoea cousins across the water in Australia?
This February, as another Waitangi Day looms and the complex and shifting relationships between Maori and Pakeha are foregrounded once again, we are proud to be able to present an exhibition by eight artists whose work speaks powerfully and insistently about being Maori, today, in 21st Century Aotearoa.
The exhibition will be opened by Pita Turei (Ngai Tai ki Tamaki, Ngati Paoa, Nga Rauru Kiitahi).
Nau mai, Haere mai! ”
Photography: Kallan MacLeod
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
AYESHA GREEN
Lukas' First Day
2019-20
acrylic on canvas
1350mm H x 900mm W
Courtesy Jhana Millers Gallery
AYESHA GREEN
Ayesha's First Day
2019-20
acrylic on canvas
1350mm H x 900mm W
Courtesy Jhana Millers Gallery
AYESHA GREEN
Jordan's First Day
2019-20
acrylic on canvas
1350mm H x 900mm W
Courtesy Jhana Millers Gallery
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
Hiria Anderson-Mita
A Pot of Wenoweno and Brisket
2020
oil on canvas
250mm H x 205mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hiria Anderson-Mita
The Last Wildflower
2019
oil on canvas
405mm H x 305mm W
Hiria Anderson-Mita
In This Room
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 255mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Tagging is a Real Problem
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 255mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hiria Anderson-Mita
View from Tāwhana Street
2020
oil on canvas
300mm H x 350mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
FIONA PARDINGTON
Polyommats eros Och. wing scales, 1
2016
pigment inks on Hahnemühle photo rag
1568mm H x 1058mm W
Edition: 10 + 3 AP / Courtesy Starkwhite
FIONA PARDINGTON
Lycaeides Melissa (Melissa Blue) wing scales, 2
2020
pigment inks on Hahnemühle photo rag
1568mm H x 1048mm W
Edition: 10 + 3 AP / Courtesy Starkwhite
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
PĀNiA!
Saw Sore Horse
2020
Wood, powder-coated steel, hobby horse head, dowel, glue, faux leather, duster, wheels, fake eyelashes, band aids, bandage, fixings, sound, handsaw
1200mm H x 1250mm W x 500mm D
Courtesy the artist and Mokopōpaki
PĀNiA!
See Saw Sore Horse
2020
Wood, enamel, hobby horse head, dowel, glue, faux leather, duster, fake eyelashes, bandages, fixings, sound, rotation seesaw, aluminium tape
1380mm H x 2000mm W x 500mm D
Courtesy the artist and Mokopōpaki
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
NIKAU HINDIN
6.2.1840 Te Rā i Waitohungia Te Tiriti ō Waitangi
2020
aute (paper mulberry), kōkōwhai (red ochre), ngārahu (soot pigment)
1030mm H x 450mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
NIKAU HINDIN
Ki Ngā Rangi Tūhāhā
2020
aute (paper mulberry), kōkōwhai (red ochre), ngārahu (soot pigment)
465mm H x 240mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
NIKAU HINDIN
Ki Ngā Rangi Tūhāhā II
2020
aute (paper mulberry), kōkōwhai (red ochre)
530mm H x 255mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
NIKAU HINDIN
Rākau Nui o te Waru o Rehua (11.1.2020, full moon of January)
2020
aute (paper mulberry), kōkōwhai (red ochre), ngārahu (soot pigment)
420mm H x 220mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
NIKAU HINDIN
Ahikā
2020
aute (paper mulberry), kōkōwhai (red ochre), ngārahu (soot pigment)
410mm H x 300mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
BRETT GRAHAM
Water Dreaming
2013
Pacific Kauri
450mm H x 295mm W x 50mm D
PRIVATE COLLECTION
BRETT GRAHAM
Water Dreaming
2013
Pacific Kauri
450mm H x 295mm W x 50mm D
PRIVATE COLLECTION
BRETT GRAHAM
Water Dreaming
2013
Pacific Kauri
450mm H x 295mm W x 50mm D
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
Star Gossage
Girl of the Dawn Mist
2020
oil on linen
305mm H x 305mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Star Gossage
Untitled
2020
earth pigments and acrylic on found cardboard
875mm H x 580mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
Star Gossage
Untitled
2020
earth pigments and acrylic on found cardboard
405mm H x 210mm W x 180mm D
Star Gossage
Untitled
2020
earth pigments and acrylic on found cardboard
405mm H x 210mm W x 180mm D
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View
Russ Flatt
Ever
2016
inkjet photograph on Hahnemühle photo rag
762mm H x 1143mm W
Edition: 3 + 1 AP
Russ Flatt
Spoon
2016
inkjet photograph on Hahnemühle photo rag
762mm H x 1143mm W
Release the Stars
February 2020
Installation View