Gisborne artists Melanie Tahata and Maia Keane at the HOEA! Gallery where a new exhibition Hononga X Aroha is now on.
Gisborne artists Melanie Tahata and Maia Keane at the HOEA! Gallery where a new exhibition Hononga X Aroha is now on.
An eclectic mix of artworks from prints to weaving are now part of the Hononga X Aroha exhibition on at HOEA! Gallery, Gisborne.
The exhibition is one of the outcomes of the Hononga X Aroha artists’ residency hosted by the gallery across April and May.
As part of the residency, Gisborne artists Maia Keane, Rihari Campbell-Collier, Melanie Tahata and Kataraina Poi were joined by three artists from out of town, Paul Edgar Bird (Masterton), Benny (Tāmaki Makaurau) and AJ Fata.
“The residency was an opportunity for the artists to share and collaborate with one another, to build lasting relationships, to enact manaakitanga and also ensure that our takatāpui whanaunga know they are significant, needed, important members of our whānau and community,” says gallery director Mel Tangaere-Baldwin.
Takatāpui is a term used broadly to describe the Māori queer community in all of its fluidity and whakapapa.
Alongside Creative NZ, the residency was funded by The Burnett Foundation’s Hononga Takatāpui fund.
HOEA! applied for the funding to host the residency to provide time and space for a group of takatāpui artists, many of whom had exhibited at HOEA! in the past.
“We got so much inspiration from one another and were sad when the residency came to an end,” says Maia Keane.
Maia Keane with two pieces she completed in the artists' residency at HOEA! Gallery.
The residency began at Rangiwaho Marae where the artists came together to learn about the rohe (region), make art, eat well, rest and get to know one another.
“It was the best week,” says Melanie Tahata.
“We are all art school graduates but once you leave you often work in a silo and it can be lonely. It was so great to share a space and work collaboratively with others.”
Mel Tangaere-Baldwin said it was an incredibly peaceful, generous and productive wānanga.
After the week at Rangiwaho, the out-of-town artists stayed on and transformed the gallery into studio spaces alongside the local artists.
The gallery provided accommodation for all the residents and for three weeks they made art non-stop, and learned from and with one another.
Over the course of the residency, guest artists from around the country came and spent time with the residents. These included Ayla Collin, Georgina May Young, Emiko Sheehan, Michelle Kerr, Āio Quirk, Etanah Lalau-Talapa, Ngaumu Jones, Jessica Palalagi, James Tapsell Kururangi, Edith Amatuanai, Jordan Davey Emms and Jade Townsend.
“The residency was called Hononga X Aroha because is was intended to be about forming sincere connections – to be maintained through enacting aroha,” says Tangaere-Baldwin.
“The exhibition is the result of this time spent together, fragments of what happened - of what was made besides memories and friendships,” she said.
