Edith Amituanai / Kelcy Taratoa
Edith Amituanai - Mrs Amituanai
Kelcy Taratoa - Back to Mine: Urban Realities
18 June - 30 July
City Gallery Wellington is pleased to present 2 x 2 Contemporary Projects, a series of two exhibitions, each showcasing two artists. City Gallery Wellington artists’ projects aim to show art and artists at the forefront of contemporary practice, providing a focused solo exhibition opportunity for artists whose work is fresh, innovative, and rich in ideas.
2 x 2 Contemporary Projects feature photographer Edith Amituanai and painter Kelcy Taratoa in this first exhibition and multi-media artist Lonnie Hutchinson and video artist Sriwhana Spong in the second programme, opening in August. Whilst these are four distinct exhibitions, they share some common concerns and show that the issue of identity formation, at both a personal and broader cultural level, has ongoing currency for artists working in a wide range of media.
A concern with portraiture and an anthropological approach to the exploration cultural identity links the work of Amituanai and Taratoa. Although working in different media these two artists can be seen to be investigating and documenting markers of identity.
A first generation, New Zealand-born Samoan, Amituanai photographs her extended family and friends to explore the relationship between personal and communal rituals and the way traditions mutate and change across time and geography. Her exhibition Mrs Amituanai is a series of photographs of New Zealand Samoan weddings, including those of her friends and her own wedding, where she became Mrs Amituanai.
Amituanai’s photographs reference both casual family snapshots and formal portraiture, and in their construction sit somewhere between straight documentary and staged photography. The tradition of photography itself is paid homage to, most notably in the frequent inclusion of framed family portraits visible on the walls and backgrounds of her photographs.
Taratoa’s painting can also be seen as portraiture with the artist present in every work looking out from the canvas and engaging the viewer. Yet they extend beyond self-portraiture as they blur the boundary between the real and the fictional and work to investigate the forces that shape personal and social identity in contemporary New Zealand. The artist stands in a cityscape dotted with references to the New Zealand urban environment—a Four Square, McDonalds, street signs, state houses, supermarkets. Entering this world are superheroes of comics, film and TV—Spiderman, Batman, the Hulk, the Silver Surfer. The paintings, with their rich collision of iconic images, construct a complex topography which charts the impact of urbanisation and globalisation on local cultures. They a question about what it means to grow up Maori in an urban environment.
Taratoa has said that comics and these superheroes were an important part of the culture and period in which he grew up. He is interested in them because ‘their characters and stories reflect on the condition of modern society and the innate characteristics of the human condition’. They also make a statement about the global prevalence of American popular culture. The characters depicted in the paintings have been chosen because they all confront internal identity struggles—a parallel that the artist believes confronts indigenous people.
Edith Amituanai graduated with a Bachelor of Design majoring in Photography from UNITEC in 2005. She had work in the major group exhibition ‘Break Shift’ at the Govett Brewster in the summer of 2004-05 and was one of 20 photographers selected for inclusion in the recent publication Contemporary New Zealand Photography.
Kelcy Taratoa (Ngaiterangi, Ngati Raukawa) graduated with a Masters degree in Maori Visual Arts from Massey University in 2005. The Who Am I? Episodes developed as part of his Masters dissertation, were shown at the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt and Te Manawa in Palmerston North last year. He lives in Palmerston North where he paints and lectures at UCOL.
Press Release: Edith Amituanai