New exhibition Lalaga: Le Hui Fono celebrates Pacific culture at Govett-Brewster Gallery

The Lalaga: Le Hui Fono exhibition will run until May 2025. Photo / Hayley Bethell

The contemporary culture of Te Moana nui-a-Kiwa (Pacific) is on show in a new exhibition opening at New Plymouth District Council’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Len Lye Centre.

Lalaga: Le Hui Fono brings together artists and communities from Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Aotearoa, working together to make the gallery a place to celebrate unique and connected aspects of culturally significant materials, designs, stories, sounds, and language.

The director of the council’s cultural organisations, Dr Zara Stanhope, said the exhibition seeks to strengthen connections between Pasifika artists and communities, and those of Taranaki and the Govett-Brewster, and has been in development for three years.

“The wider Lalaga – lalaga means to ‘to weave together’ or ‘woven’ – conversation has been led by the gallery’s Pacific public programme’s coordinator Theresa Tongi and Pacific curator at large for Govett-Brewster, Ruha Fifita.

“Their sustained work with local communities and tangata whenua artists, as well as those from Tonga, Samoa and Fiji, have produced many ideas which have enabled the Govett-Brewster to really grow this project into an ongoing, evolving, and important conversation, held across multiple chapters.

“Another important chapter was the establishment of an advisory group, formed from the local Pacific communities, to support and guide our mahi. That group has been a key outcome of this process, and relationships have benefited from opportunities to experience each other’s cultures and contexts.”

The exhibition includes newly created artworks alongside important heritage works. A mural by Taranaki artists Sean Hill and Haoro Hond working with Tongan artist collective Seleka International Art Society Initiative will be displayed alongside a collectively created ngatu (painted bark cloth) and prized family objects, to the resonant sound of traditional Tongan instruments created by Tu’ifonualava Kaivelata. Also included is a 22-metre-long heritage ngatu launima, held in the Puke Ariki collection, on display for the first time in three decades.

Stanhope said the exhibition is an opportunity for artists to share the processes of making. Weavers Kim Kahu (Ngāruahine) and Itāmua Muaiāoomālō Mataiva D Robertson will be joined by collaborators including Mako Jones, Shona Kelsen and the Ngāmotu Lalaga Weavers to create new fibre works within the gallery across the duration of the exhibition.

“Lalaga: Le Hui Fono has also been the catalyst for a new Lalaga Youth Ambassador’s programme for the region’s young Pasifika people, aimed at building their agency and vision for the future,” said Tongi.

“The programme offers young local Pasifika people the chance to become ambassadors for their cultures. The group of 20 local youth are working with the exhibition’s artists to learn and demonstrate their own identity as part of their community and for others, and will showcase this during the exhibition’s opening weekend.”

Creative New Zealand has been a fundamental supporter of the development of Lalaga: Le Hui Fono.

Lalaga: Le Hui Fono is on until May 11 2025. Visit govettbrewster.com to find out more.