Pātaka art + Museum, Porirua, Aotearoa New Zealand. November 2023 – February 2024.
Review by Margaret Cassidy
Porirua (Māori: Pari-ā-Rua) is a small city in the Wellington Region of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand an easy train journey north from the CBD. It sits on a scenic harbour and contains a dynamic and vibrant art gallery and museum, filled with light and colour. The diversity of exhibitions and programs hosted at the Pātaka art + Museum Porirua reflect the local population with one quarter of the city’s population having roots in the Pacific Islands and Māori making up a further fifth of locals.
The explosion of colour with pinks and yellows popping off walls attract visitors to the Fenoga Tāoga Niue exhibition first, the colours highlighting intricately woven mats, baskets, hats and other tāoga or treasures made by the collective minds, hearts and hands of 45 past and present creatives from the Niue community in Aotearoa. The first exhibition of Niue handcrafts in Aotearoa, it features projects and treasures made by members of the Falepipi he Mafola Niuean Handcraft Group Inc over the last 30 years. The group is based in Ōtāhuhu.
Highlighted in this display of over 350 individual pieces is the demonstrated traditional knowledge, very fine skills and wisdom of the current members on display through their tāoga and plays an important role in preserving the practice of Niuean culture and heritage.
These include many finely crafted floral vases, placemats, trays, baskets, wall-hangings, fans, church hats and even earrings woven from either traditional pandanus or multi coloured raffia and coconut midribs by these master weavers.
This exhibition was originally on display from Māngere Arts Centre Ngā Tohu o Uenuku in Tāmaki Makaurau (MAC) in southern Auckland from April 2023 and then travelled to Porirua due to the connections between communities.
The show has been co-curated by Barbara Makuati-Afitu and Kolokesa U. Māhina-Tuai from the Lagi-Maama Academy and Consultancy, a cultural organisation based in Tāmaki Makaurau which aims to connect and build bridges between institutions and communities. Set up in 2018, its kaupapa is: “we mediate at the intersection of Indigenous communities and institutional settings to create a harmonious time-space by embedding different ways of knowing, seeing, and doing.”
I had first encountered the mediating work of Lagi-Maama during Covid when they facilitated Tok Stori Tuesdays online, enabling artists from the 17+ island nations with diaspora living in Aotearoa to share what art is throughout Moana Oceania.
Fenoga Tāoga Niue’s display of traditional craft skills retained within the community is a wonderful testament to the skills and wisdom of this longterm group of Niue women. It is complemented by the first standalone exhibition of ie pili Niue in Aotearoa, Foaki Noa – The Art of Ie Pili Niue curated by emerging heritage artist Joy Fiapalagi Sipeli-Antipas. Ie pili are highly treasured Niue textiles, lovingly printed and stitched together and gifted, received and shared without expectation of return among the generations of Niue magafaoa families. 28 Niue women in the greater Wellington region have learnt the art over the last year.
For printmakers like myself, a highlight of this more local display was the block stencils made by Kirsten Feilo, current Chair of the Tupumaiaga a Niue Trust, that members of the Niutupu Pulapulaola group used to create stunning hiapo-inspired patterns on fabric.
Pātaka Art + Museum is to be applauded for showing these exhibitions which are a demonstration of the value of enabling intergenerational transmission of Niue Indigenous knowledges and practices, strengthen intergenerational connection, wellbeing, and identity, and encouraging younger Niue leaders to continue being inspired and empowered to be the authors of their own narratives.