Land, Home, Mother: Pasifika Art Takes Center Stage at Moana Fresh
Land, Home, Mother
Moana Fresh Gallery - 64 Rosebank Road Avondale
Siliga David Setoga, Esther Mauga F Walters, Kristal.G
Peep a fale palagi, Mangaian chess pieces and a sign symbolising fa’asinomaga at the new Moana Fresh window gallery in the heart of Avondale!
Putting Pasifika creativity at the forefront of its small and perfectly formed gallery shop, Moana Fresh continues to create communities and conversations with these three conceptual works to spark up the talanoa around our ideas of identity.
The micro exhibition presents visual ideas from 3 very different artists as individual expressions of ‘Land, Home, Mother’, curated by Bonni Tamati who says,
“Pacific people have always been brilliant knowledge seekers and knowledge holders and through creativity we share our knowledge of the world”
‘Avondale Village Sign’ by Siliga David Setoga pays homage to the iconic village signs of Samoa - shifting the focus to the ways that the idea of a village is recreated in Aotearoa.
Siliga aligns this to the ways that Pasifika communities are so attached to their phone area codes to signal their identities, with #685 to the world and #275 in Aotearoa being the biggest examples.
Known for the Popo Hardwear brand of t-shirts that he and his wife Luisa made famous at the Otara Markets in the early 2000’s, Siliga’s work has taken on many forms over the decades and been shown in exhibitions and showcased in exhibitioins locally and around the world.
The idea of ‘Home’ is beautifully executed in the mini ‘Fale Palagi’, created by artist Esther Mauga, down to a micro Samoan salu, weathered roof with water stains and family portraits on the wall.
The piece was commissioned as part of an educational kaupapa about the ‘Dawn Raids’, bringing to life the homes that migrant Pasifika communities lived in in this notorious era of the NZ government’s persecution of Pacific people in Aotearoa.
‘Fale Palagi’ lives on in this window exhibition where you can see the painstaking detail in each room that reflects this time, and honours the ways that Pasifika people re-created ‘Home’ in this new country that then became places that were raided during the early morning police hunts for overstayers in the 1970’s.
Chess take on a new life in Kristal.G’s ‘Mother’ piece where she creates two chess section - Mangaian pieces that represent Gods in the form of pre- colonial marae, nature and spiritual leaders and English pieces showing the people who influenced reliogion and the colonisation on the island of Mangaia, including a Rarotongan and three Tahitian missionaries sent to convert the locals.
Stop by Moana Fresh at 64 Rosebank Road Avondale to peep the works and pick up some yummy Pasifika Xmas prezzies from the range of creative goods inside, or visit their website here!
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Made with support of Creative New Zealand
