Current Exhibition
The 2025 Fale-Ship Residency Exhibition
Quishile Charan, Harrison Freeth, p.Walters
10 Oct - 6 Dec, 2025
Opening night - 10 Oct, 6 to 8pm
Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust, L1, 300 Karangahape Rd, Auckland
Summary
The Tautai Fale-ship Residencies place value on the everyday experiences of Moana artists operating in their own creative centres. In a model conceived in response to the 2020 lockdown, we now celebrate the Fale-ship Residencies as a vital part of Tautai’s ongoing programme to foster and showcase Pacific creatives. This year, we launched our latest iteration of the Residency, which sought to provide three artists with more time and resources to explore their creative practices. This year’s recipients – Quishile Charan, Harrison Freeth, and p.Walters – each undertook a three-month residency to develop new projects within their own creative centres.
Indo-Fijian craft and social practitioner, researcher, writer and critical theorist Quishile Charan approaches craft as a science-fiction practice of building new worlds from the seeds of reality. A descendent of Girmit — Quishile holds close a core set of anarchist—anti-colonial, anti-institution, anti-authority—values. In her experimental, relational pursuits, Quishile expresses these values while seeking to form different visions of home with her own hands.
Harrison Freeth is an artist of German-Tongan, Sāmoan, and Scottish heritage, born in Ōtepoti and based in Tāmaki Makaurau. His process-based practice is guided by curiosity, materiality, and open-ended learning. Through themes of identity and belonging, his work reveals how individual experiences both shape and are shaped by a larger shared history.
Taniwha p.Walters is local to the Kingdom of South Auckland and beyond, with wings and bones stretching across Aotearoa and to the islands of Tonga. Their work reflects their dissidence to the colonial imagination and legacy of “new zealand”, and their devotion to understanding and venerating their queer and monstrous body.
The Fale-ship Residency Exhibition presents the outcomes of their undertakings.
Artists
Quishile Charan is an Indo-Fijian craft and social practitioner, researcher, writer and critical theorist who approaches craft as a science-fiction practice of building new worlds from the seeds of reality. As a descendent of Girmit (indentured labour)—part of a history and present in which autonomy was/continues to be denied to her people—Quishile holds close a core set of anarchist—anti-colonial, anti-institution, anti-authority—values. In her experimental, relational pursuits, Quishile expresses these values while seeking to form different visions of home with her own hands. Melted into Indo-Fijian gardening, cooking and living, it’s a family effort that prioritises the anti-colonial work of nurturing and caring for each other outside of Western hegemony. Quishile’s practice cannot function without the people in her life. A lot of her work lies in these relationships—choosing her family, holding them in the fabric of community and moving beyond historical systems of harm. Quishile has an MVA from Auckland University of Technology, where she also completed a PhD in visual arts. She has exhibited at institutions including Artspace Aotearoa, Tāmaki Makaurau; SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin; and Kunsthalle Wien Museum. You can find Quishile working at her whare/ghar, which she shares with her chosen family in Aotearoa, making tarkari for loved ones, deep in talanoa while tending to her dye pots and sewing in the garage.
Harrison Freeth is an artist of German-Tongan, Sāmoan, and Scottish heritage, born in Ōtepoti and based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Working across sculpture, installation, and drawing, his process-based practice is guided by curiosity, materiality, and open-ended learning. Freeth explores how elements of children’s play such as model-making, role-play, repetition, and symbolism extend into adult life as tools for navigating uncertainty and complexity. Through themes of identity and belonging, his work reflects on how we come to understand the world; not by seeking answers, but by asking more questions. In this space of inquiry, the personal begins to blur with the collective, revealing how individual experiences both shape and are shaped by a larger shared history. Freeth studied at Dunedin School of Art, graduating with a Bachelor of Visual Arts and a major in sculpture. His works are held in the collections of Canterbury Museum, Otago Polytechnic and the Wrightsman House.
p Walters is a taniwha, local to the Kingdom of South Auckland and beyond, with wings and bones stretching across Aotearoa and to the islands of Tonga. Their work reflects their dissidence to the colonial imagination and legacy of “new zealand”, and their devotion to understanding and venerating their queer and monstrous body. Graduating in 2022 from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland with a BFA First Class Honours, they practice collectively & individually throughout the motu & Moana; via art making, curation, exhibition making, public programming, writing, etc.
Public Programmes
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Casting Kupesi Workshop with Harrison Freeth
Saturday 25 October
12:00-3:00PMTautai Gallery
Level 1 - 300 Karangahape Road,
Auckland CBD, 1010Explore the process of wax casting in this free three-hour workshop with Harrison Freeth.
Learn about the pre-production process and create a bronze cast of your own teeth using a lost wax method.
Finish the day with a wax cast of your teeth which will later be turned into bronze and displayed in our community hub.
After the show concludes each participant will be able to take home their teeth as a piece of their kupesi remembered in bronze.
This workshop is ideal for artists, practitioners, or anyone interested in the pre-production process prior to metal casting.
All materials provided to support your learning.
Participants are kindly asked to bring a plate to share as a koha. -
Textile and Print Workshop with Quishile Charan
Saturday 22 November
10am – 4pmTaro Patch Creative
9 Dunnotar Road,
Papatoetoe, Auckland 2025A free drop-in day to explore textile making techniques.
Create your own unique designs, experiment with textile inks and layering colours using a mixture of woodblocks and lino cuts.
All materials will be provided on the day, including test fabrics, inks, woodblocks, lino, carving and printing tools to learn and create your own linocut to take home.
Bring along any items you’d like to print yourself, such as t-shirts or any other kinds of fabric.Water-based fabric ink will be used in this workshop, please wear clothes you can get messy in.
Past Exhibitions
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before we learn to talanoa
Lily Aitui Laita and Ululau Ama
8 Aug - 20 Sep, 2025
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Borne and Bred
Linda Va’aelua
9 May - 5 Jul 2025
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Selau Pasege
George Funaki, Jasmine Tuiā, Jimmy Ma’ia’i
14 Feb - 5 Apr 2025
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A Seat at the Table
Teuila Fatupaito, Latamai Katoa, Sisi Panikoula, Brett Taefu, and Daedae Tekoronga-Waka.
Dec 5 – Dec 20 2024
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Solesolevaki
Solesolevaki, initiated by artist-curator Vasemaca Tavola, explores the concept of solesolevaki as a tool to enable connection and intergenerational cultural transmission, across four generations of one family. Featuring works by Lanuola Mereia Aniseko, Ella Carling, Tiana Carling, Mereia Carling, Mereia Sauvukivuki, Helen Tavola, Kaliopate Tavola and Vasemaca Tavola. Exhibition design by Christian Carling.
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When it Feels Over
Christopher Ulutupu
TAUTAI Pacific Arts Trust, in collaboration with CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image, is pleased to present Leave room for Jesus... (2023) and The Pleasures of Unbelonging (2023) moving image work by Christopher Ulutupu.
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Grasping the Horizon
Cora-Allan Lafaiki Twiss
In this exhibition Cora-Allan Lafaiki Twiss’ connection to the black lines of her ancestors are opened wider with a range of new patterns and new hiapo compositions.
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Good Hair Day
Good Hair Day curated by Luisa Tora explores urban narratives around hair. Featuring artists Bali Buliruarua, Māia Piata Rose Week, Nââwié Tutugoro, Karlin Morrison Raju and Peter Seeto Wing.
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Titiro ki muri, kia whakatika ā mua | Look to the past to proceed to the future
Coinciding with the Hōteke (winter) holidays, this programme has been organised by Hana Pera Aoake and Tautai Pacific Arts Trust.
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Queen Fiapoto: switch, code, reverse
Queen Fiapoto: switch, code, reverse is an exercise of agency by 5 young Samoan women. The multidisciplinary project is presented by the sugaz of Malae/Co.
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The Last Kai
The Last Kai exhibition cleverly uses familiar religious iconography from within Pacific homes to bring up current discussions around women’s representation and the role of Christianity in the modern Pacific household.
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683 Baby xo
683 Baby xo examines the complexities of being New Zealand-born Niueans, craving that connection to their Niuean heritage while acknowledging their perspective as diaspora youth. Featuring work by Dahlina Taueu, Quentin Tauetau-Tohitau and Kordell Cameron.
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Taputapu Ātea
Taputapu Ātea is an installation of new paintings and digital works that explore the artificially intelligent future of our culture’s materialisation.
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Haus of Memories
Haus of Memories is a multidisciplinary residency project led by Studio Kiin that explores and gathers fragments of how we archive and draw upon memory to honour our future past.
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lean into the pain: archive of a tatau thesis
Award-winning producer and sound artist Anonymouz presents a deeply personal multimedia exhibition that explores his thesis on the Indigenous practice of tatau being an analogue metaphor, philosophy and framework for lived experience.
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The Water Tastes Different Here
In*ter*is*land Collective, a misfit collection of queer, moana artists and activists based in London, UK and in Aoteraoa New Zealand, present their first exhibition in Aotearoa at Tautai Gallery.
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Toitū Te Moana
Hawaiki, the ancestral homeland, is the beginning point for Toitū Te Moana, and the place from which the artists’ mātauranga, their knowledge, descends.
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Oh My Ocean
Curated by Nigel Borrell, this exhibition includes work by Rawiri Brown, Fa’amele Etuale, Ioane Ioane, Elisabeth Kumaran, Sani Muliaumaseali’i, Michel Mulipola, Iata Peautolu, Keva Rands and Chris Van Doren.
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Moana Waiwai Moana Pāti
Moana Waiwai Moana Pāti celebrates the diversity of Pacific creatives, and includes film, digital image-making, painting, tatau, poetic prose, sonic landscapes and performance.
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Voyagers: The Niu World
Combining pieces created during Aotearoa’s lockdown and new work, this exhibition aims to tap into the spirit of the great explorers of the Pacific, consulting the stars and charting a course into the wild blue expanse.
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Saltwater / INTERCONNECTIVITY
Tautai Gallery is transformed to embody the Moana / Solwara worldview
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Moana Wall
The 70m hoardings were transformed into the MOANA WALL using the existing infrastructure as a canvas that highlights contemporary Pasifika artists and celebrates the diverse community of Karangahape Road.
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Moana Legacy
Tautai’s first exhibition in its new gallery space, the show was developed from an existing partnership with Blak Dot Gallery, Naarm (Melbourne) featuring Tagata Moana artists working in both Aotearoa and Australia.
