Toi Tauranga Art Gallery announces reopening line-up
Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place, Kaylene Whiskey.
TOI TAURANGA ART GALLERY REOPENS IN NOVEMBER WITH EXCEPTIONAL LINE-UP OF EXHIBITIONS BY LEADING ARTISTS FROM AOTEAROA, AUSTRALIA AND THE PACIFIC
Following an extensive redevelopment and transformation, Toi Tauranga Art Gallery will reopen the doors to visitors this November with nine exceptional exhibitions by artists from across Aotearoa, Australia and the Pacific.
From ascending artists to art titans from Tauranga Moana, the gallery’s reopening line-up includes carefully curated exhibitions and collaborations showcasing portraiture, textile art, jewellery, video work and one of the most ambitious augmented reality (AR) art experiences to be shown in a New Zealand gallery.
Toi Tauranga Art Gallery Director Sonya Korohina says, “As the preeminent visual arts destination in the Bay of Plenty region, it is vital that our work represents the best contemporary and historical art while also being grounded in our place and reflective of our history.
“The Gallery’s completion marks a major milestone, a cultural anchor, in Tauranga’s Te Manawataki o Te Papa project – one of the country’s most significant civic precincts currently in development. Our reopening represents a pivotal moment for the city in arts, creativity and storytelling and our opening exhibitions reflect and celebrate this.”
Inside the new Craigs Investment Partners Atrium, Toi Tauranga Art Gallery visitors will get to experience the wonder of Kereama Taepa’s Whakairo. For the last decade, Taepa (Te Arawa, Te Āti Awa, Tauranga Moana) has established himself as the foremost contemporary digital artist in Aotearoa. Utilising emergent technologies such as projection, 3D printing, AR and virtual reality to tell narratives of the past and the present, his work explores digital culture and its impact on Māori culture.
On premiering this work at the Toi Tauranga Art Gallery reopening, Taepa says, “It feels like an age since we began this journey – I’m so excited to finally share the work with everyone and unleash it into the world. It’s fitting I think – origins and starting points is a theme that runs through the installation – and I’m really grateful to be able to create for this amazing new space. My very first exhibited AR artwork was also here at the Gallery, back in 2012, so it feels like a full circle thing too. I hope you all enjoy the show!”
Two members of the incredibly talented Urale aiga (family), mother and daughter Pusi and Vaimaila Urale, will exhibit together for the first time. Vaimaila, whose work unites traditional Samoan symbols with digital technologies, and Pusi, who is well known for her bold and vibrant paintings based on her memories of Samoan village life, will present a show which represents their distinctive creative practices and more than a century of Samoan knowledge.
The Gallery will present the first joint exhibition by Aotearoa-based artist Tyrone Te Waa (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) and Melbourne-based artist Matthew Harris. Harris works with everyday objects to create sculptures that are often shaped by memory and ancestry. Te Waa’s practice explores the body, belief and the unseen. Together, their practices speak across distance and heritage, opening pathways between past and present.
Celebration radiates through Kaylene Whiskey’s joyful Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place, which will be screened in Aotearoa for the first time. Whiskey’s artworks incorporate pop culture references alongside traditional Anangu culture in a playful interpretation of the artist’s personal experience of contemporary life in a remote Central Australian Indigenous community. Appearing centre stage, like the main character of a music video, to a soundtrack of classic rock, pop and country music, the artist dons a bright pink wig and shimmering garb, surrounded by an entourage of kungka kunpu (strong women) from her community, creating a collage of love for people and lands bursting with colour.
Tauranga artist Maraea Timutimu (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Tūhoe) is a contemporary Maori artist who has gained recognition for her work across various mediums, including painting, sculpture and installation art. Her creative work and self-portraits extend from the deeply interwoven identity of Māori people to their landscapes. For the Gallery reopening, Timutimu will create an outdoor artwork – a durational performance of the movement of earth – which uses whenua largely sourced from Matapihi in the Bay of Plenty. Over the course of this exhibition, the artwork will naturally erode and the layers will fall, crack and disappear.
Land of My Ancestors is a deeply personal retrospective that honours the work and whakapapa of Tauranga artist Darcy Nicholas (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Kāhui Maunga, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāti Hauā). Presented for the first time in Tauranga Moana, this major exhibition draws together a curated selection of drawings, paintings, jewellery and carvings spanning nearly six decades of practice. It is both a homecoming and a tribute — to the ancestors, landscapes, and stories that have shaped Nicholas’ world. Land of My Ancestors is an act of aroha and creative generosity, curated by Shirley-Marie Whata-Coffin (Te Arawa, Ngāti Pikiao, Raukawa, Ngāti Ahuru), which invites audiences to witness the legacy of one of Aotearoa’s most visionary Māori artists, art leaders and advocates.
Glimmer brings together the work of Meredith Turnbull (Australia), Vanessa Arthur (Aotearoa, New Zealand) and Moniek Schrijer (Aotearoa, New Zealand), three artists who explore materiality, adornment, experimentation and play through contemporary jewellery and object-based work. Drawing from architecture, everyday ephemera and sculpture, these artists explore the relationships between body, object and space. They disrupt and expand conventional definitions of jewellery, prompting Gallery visitors to consider the roles that small, intimate objects play in shaping how we inhabit the world.
Curated by Dr. Penelope Jackson MNZM, Old Friends, from the Toi Tauranga Art Gallery collection, brings together the work of Mark Braunias, Edward Bullmore, Nigel Brown, Vanessa Reed, Robin White (Ngāti Awa), Venetta Miles, Doreen McNeill and Betty Wishart. Brown, Bullmore and White are all artists who lived in Tauranga in the days before there was a public art gallery. Their donations of artworks were about recognising how necessary the development of a gallery was for a burgeoning city. This exhibition sees artworks come together, like old friends, highlighting the importance of relationships in art spaces.
Visitors will step into a magic sense of wonder with a delightful art box adventure by
Pāpāmoa-based artists Tania Lewis-Rickard (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tūhoe) and Tawhai Rickard (Ngāti Porou, Ngati Uepohatu) who have collaborated on a series of mixed media installations that blend light, pattern and sculpture. For the first series of boxes ever exhibited inside the Gallery, designed for both kids and kids-at-heart, visitors can grab a map, wander around and discover secret scenes revealed behind closed doors.
The Gallery will officially open to the public with a vibrant free community celebration day on Saturday 15 November from 10am to 4pm. After a 9.30am ribbon cutting, the doors will be thrown open with exhibitions throughout the Gallery and a programme of activities taking place all day outside in Masonic Park, including a lineup of local performers, choirs, kapa haka and more.
Follow Toi Tauranga Art Gallery’s reopening events and activities, and upcoming exhibitions, on the website and social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn).
For further information, interviews and images, please contact: Siobhan Waterhouse on siobhan@siobhanwaterhouse.nz or via What’s App on +44 7 884 598 345.
Cover image: Old Friends, Mark Braunias
About Toi Tauranga Art Gallery
Toi Tauranga Art Gallery is the preeminent visual arts destination in the Bay of Plenty region.
One of the key partners in Tauranga city’s future civic precinct, Te Manawataki o Te Papa, the Gallery’s purpose is to help visitors build lifelong relationships with art by offering exceptional experiences that engage, inspire, educate and challenge.
With a year-round programme of work by leading national and international artists, Toi Tauranga Art Gallery works with emerging to established practitioners, across a wide range of research, media and creative practice.
The organisation values its partnership with tangata whenua of Tauranga Moana and prioritises partnership and kaitiakitanga (guardianship), operating in an environmentally responsible way.