Friends + Family
1 September – 26 November, 2023
Exhibition Opening: Thursday 31 August, 6pm
Ground Floor Galleries
Friends + Family is a group exhibition that embodies a kaupapa Māori and kaupapa Moana Oceania way of educating our youth in the visual arts. Emerging artist Ercan Cairns’ story reflects his unique access to some of Aotearoa’s most treasured senior artists; Fatu Feu’u, Emily Karaka, Donn Ratana, Tēvita Lātū, Taniela Petelō, Terje Koloamatangi, Alexis Neal and Colin Gibbs. Cairns seeks to critique an art education system that failed, or saved him, and brings together his circle of mentors’ voices to showcase their impact on his practice.
Featuring the work of Ercan Cairns with Fatu Feu’u, Emily Karaka, Donn Ratana, Tēvita Lātū, Taniela Petelō, Terje Koloamatangi, Alexis Neal and Colin Gibbs.
Signalling the flaws and failure of his Western art education experience, emerging artist Ercan Cairns attributes his most meaningful teaching and learning to his unique circle of mentors and elders, Fatu Feu’u, Emily Karaka, Donn Ratana, Tevita Lātū, Taniela Petelō, Alexis Neal, and Terje Koloamatangi.
Friends + Family is a group exhibition that embodies and celebrates a Kaupapa Māori and Kaupapa Pasifika way of educating our youth in the visual arts. It is a collective critique of an art education system that has failed not just Ercan but many like him and provides a powerful alternative to championing our future Indigenous creatives.
In the modern world, art is considered an individual’s affair. We, however, view art from the interest of a collective and encourage our artists to nurture each other. We do not spurn individualism; we choose to give priority to the collective. Epeli Hau’ofa (2008)
Funds of knowledge for the people of Te Moana-nui-a-kiwa, including the arts, are enacted in our communities through cross-disciplinary and intergenerational experiences with indigenous creative knowledge holders nested in our own family or community (Si’ilata, 2014). Furthermore, Tongan academic Helu-Thaman (2007) states the foundation of cultural identity for Oceania people is relational rather than individualistic. Thus, the community is a source of inspiration for our artmaking and visual narratives, with values of respect, honour, collectivism, and reciprocity as our anchors. These, however, are often underrepresented in the discourse surrounding the broader national arts landscape.
Despite this, Indigenous visions of arts education advocate communal principles, reciprocal relationships, whaikōrero, and tā-vā (time and space) constructs. Contrastingly, Western arts education paradigms often gauge achievement through individualised performance and efficiency, traits synonymous with financial success and self-sufficiency (Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti, 2005). It prompts a critical examination of dominant, privileged perspectives that dictate skills, values, and knowledge acquisition.
Providing vā (space) for emerging artists to build relationships with their elders allows them the opportunity and safety to determine their narrative and expression and explore personal issues and interests. Wellbeing is fostered through this Moana concept, where the value of maintaining and nurturing relationships is front and centre. A powerful drive for connection and enactment of tauhi vā [1]is completed when elders themselves share an openness and vulnerability, thus offering grounds for enacting tuakana-teina relationships with the younger generation.
Dagmar Dyck
[1] The socio-cultural concept of vā, literally meaning the intervening space between people, is significant to the Pacific peoples as it is a value of maintaining and nurturing kinship, and helping one another in times of need for each other, completing the concept of tauhi vā (Māhina, 2017).
Above: Installation photos from Friends + Family
The Artists
Ercan Cairns is an Auckland-based artist of Māori (Tūhoe), Tongan (‘Utungake and Tu’anuku, Vava’u) and of German descent. He paints full-time from his Mt Wellington studio. Ercan’s first solo exhibition was in 2018 at the age of 16. He now has a track record of seven sell-out shows. With a vision to disrupt the art gallery scene, Ercan seeks to push the boundaries and his exhibitions display his immense energy and talent. Read more about Ercan Cairns here
Fatu Feu’u has been pivotal in shaping the interest in contemporary Pacific art globally and nurturing a generation of Pacific artists locally. Feu'u grew up in the village of Poutasi, in Western Samoa, immigrating to New Zealand in 1966. Since becoming a full-time artist in 1988, his paintings, woodcut prints, bronze and wooden sculptures are now held in public and private collections around the world.
His works frequently blend traditional and contemporary elements, incorporating a range of influences, inspirations, techniques and motifs from Samoa and Aotearoa and more generally from Euro-American to Pacific cultures.
Emily Karaka was born in 1952 in Tāmaki Makaurau, where she continues to live and work. She is of Ngāpuhi (Ngāti Hine and Ngāti Kahu o Torongare) and Waikato-Tainui (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Te Kawerau ā Maki, Ngāti Tamaoho, Te Ākitai Waiohua, Ngāti Rori-Te Ahiwaru, Ngāti Mahuta, and Ngāti Tahinga) affiliations, and has been exhibiting for more than 40 years.
Her paintings draw on diverse art-making traditions, including toi whakairo and abstract expressionism. Characterised by dazzling colour and emotional intensity, they frequently incorporate text and tie into the artist’s longstanding work advocating kaitiakitanga and tino rangatiratanga.
Donn Ratana (Ngāi Tūhoe) is a sculptor and painter based in Hamilton. Raised in a rural Māori settlement in Murupara in the 1950s, manual tasks on the land and in the home were the norm for Ratana. He was raised in a homestead that was not on the national grid, not connected to city sewerage systems, and water was collected from the nearby punga (well).
Since he drew his first images in the sand and sculpted his first toy gun out of wood, the notion of making objects became a means to solve a design problem. Necessity was the mother of invention and this inventiveness in Ratana’s work is what underpins the breadth of his art practice and has continued to do so over 50 years as an art educator.
Tēvita Lātū was born in Tonga and attended primary on the main island, before continuing at Auckland Grammar Boys to improve his artistic skills. Captivated first by the storytelling power of comic books, and later by the resonant Pacific spirit he sensed in the colour, lines and textures of works by Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Egon Schiele. Tevita’s interest in art quickly grew through daily practice and consistent family support.
He continued his studies at St George TAFE, Sydney and the National Art School in Sydney. Latū made the decision to return to his homeland after completing a bachelor’s degree, motivated by a desire to live a life dedicated to making and teaching art back in his homeland. His work experiments with mixed media, ranging from newspaper clips, clay, coffee, charcoal, and acrylic paint depicting stories that project his interests.
Taniela Petelō is a visual artist and musician, born and raised in Haveluloto, Tongatapu, Tonga. In 2009, he began training in fine arts under artist and art teacher, Tevita Latu. As an artist, Taniela works across various media but is known best for his drawing, painting and mixed media portraits.
His regular participation in exhibitions and residencies has attracted local and international collectors, with his artworks being held in Poland, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and the United States. Beyond his work as an artist, Taniela is a dedicated community activist and educator who shares his artmaking skills across a range of ventures.
Terje Koloamatangi is of Tongan and Norwegian Sami ancestry, with ancestral ties to Kolovai, Pangaimotu Vava’u and Åmøya in Northern Norway.
Koloamatangi is an artist, cultural tattooist and researcher, whose work is centred on reconstructing customary Tongan tattooing. His practice is built on historical accounts, gleaned from texts, museum collections and Tongan oral traditions.
A passion for Tātatau has fuelled his ongoing research into the history of Tongan Tattooing, which in turn has informed a significant portion of his art practice. Terje owns and operates Small Axe Studio, an art space and tattoo studio in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.
Alexis Neal’s work as an artist is the exploration of cultural identity, the value of history and the complexities of human connection, to show how artefacts can be both personal adornment and remnants of material culture.
She graduated from Auckland University Elam School of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Post Graduate diploma in 1997 and went on to complete a master’s degree in fine art media at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London 2000. Alongside her art practice she has held tutoring positions in both academic and community institutions, working with the wider community.
Her studio practice is interdisciplinary, combining components of print, weaving in many forms and installation, to address Tikanga Maori traditions within a contemporary context.
Colin Gibbs was born in Whanganui. He spent his childhood in the shadows of the Parapara Hills, and alongside the Whanganui River. He specialised in art at Palmerston North Teachers College under the tuition of Frank Davis and Ray Thorburn and worked as an art teacher, primary teacher and university professor.
During earlier years Colin’s paintings conveyed social and political messages—appropriate in times when issues such as Māori land claims were surfacing and New Zealand became more involved in the Vietnam War. His more recent work explores biculturalism, relationships with our land, and social commentary. Colin destroyed almost all his early works—only one survives, in the collection of the Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui. His first major exhibition was in 1970 in the Sarjeant Gallery, and his work was also in the Benson and Hedges Contemporary Art Award.
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