New and significant exhibition by artist Tracy Keith now open at Hastings Art Gallery

Tracy Keith (centre) with supporters at the opening of his exhibition at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga. Photo / Max Bull-Crossan

By Sophie Davis, director of Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga – Hastings Art Gallery.

Artist Tracy Keith (Ngāpuhi) has a new exhibition at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings, titled “Remember Industry”.

Encompassing ceramics, painting and drawing, Remember Industry looks to the whakapapa (lineage) of natural materials like clay and timber.

The exhibition explores the way our relationships with these materials have forged shared histories – shaping human lives, meaning, and livelihoods.

Visitors can expect to see ceramic sculptures and wall pieces that juxtapose machine-like and industrial forms with ancient and hands-on processes, as well as a “whānau wall” of paintings and drawings.

The exhibition includes new artworks made specifically for the exhibition, along with recent significant works.

Tracy is well-known within Heretaunga’s creative community. As one of the country’s leading Māori ceramicists, he exhibits his work nationally and internationally and has been based in Heretaunga since 2020 when he moved here from Pōneke Wellington to take up a teaching position at Toimairangi School of Māori Visual Art.

The opening event for his exhibition was packed out with his students as well as his many colleagues within Te Matau-a-Māui Hawke’s Bay’s creative community.

This exhibition combines a few firsts for Tracy: his first solo exhibition in a public gallery and the first time he has exhibited ceramics alongside his paintings and drawings.

In Remember Industry, his paintings and drawings reflect unknown tīpuna and the adopted generation as a consequence of urban drift. Merging industrial forms with portraiture and figurative sculptures, the artist invokes the history of his own whānau.

The exhibition connects to the wider shared history of the urban drift post-World War II, when large groups of Māori moved from their tūrangawaewae to urban centres and townships in the pursuit of paid work.

One of those people was Keith’s grandfather, who relocated to Tokoroa to work in the local pulp and paper mill.

As a child, Tracy started sketching on the large reams of paper his grandfather brought home from work – sparking a lifelong practice.

Sketching is still the beginning of Tracy’s making process, whether in ceramics or painting. The industrial forms of his sculptures reflect the environment of his childhood and early working life.

His ceramic works are the result of rough, direct manipulation and experimentation with clay and a 500-year-old Japanese raku firing process, where ceramics are heated to extremely high temperatures, removed from the kiln, and placed in combustible materials.

This chemical reaction creates unpredictable effects and molten, metallic glazes present throughout the exhibition.

Remember Industry is a chance to step into an artist’s process and experience work by one of our leading Heretaunga artists.

Remember Industry is now open at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery until February 1 2025.

Tracy Keith will speak about his work to the public at 11am on Saturday, November 9, during the Hawke’s Bay Art Trail. Entry to all exhibitions and public events is always free and open to all.