Opening Night | Tracey Tawhiao: Taputapu Ātea
Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou te whānau!
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the opening of Tracey Tawhiao’s Taputapu Ātea - on now until 17 December.
Congratulations to Tracey, thank you for sharing your beautiful and insightful mahi toi with us. Fa’afetai tele lava to Pita Turei and Rev. Mua Strickson-Pua for opening the space.
Tracey Tawhiao’s Taputapu Ātea is on now until 17 December.
Read the transcript of Tracey Tawhiao’s opening night speech for Taputapu Ātea:
Thank you all for coming here today. Thank you to Tautai and the wonderful office goddesses for helping me put this exhibition together.
We are here because of you all.
And because –
Art is a major shifter of our consciousness.
It transcends hierarchies.
It obliterates dishonesty.
True art is about the smallest things that transform into the greatest understanding and the strongest feelings. Leading us to a richer experience in this world. I will articulate myself as my best art of communication.
As an art maker, I am never good enough, never clever enough, never honest enough and sometimes too honest. I am flawed and imperfect and that is how any of us are truly original.
I have learnt the power of trust. Trust the chaos and fear - don’t hide from it. Get closer to it. Obliterate it.
Paint the painting.
Write the poem.
Sing the song.
Let it live.
The most important idea in this show is the idea that we have a great future in spite of ourselves. We have a great future because we come from such a compelling past to live as we do today together in Aotearoa.
We currently live in a most illustrious time. We can get from here to the other side of the world by tomorrow night. We have information at our literal fingertips from every corner of the world. There is no fact I can’t find within seconds. This Information Age is unprecedented, but it heralds a time of censorship.
Censorship is not uncommon when we all have access to our own knowledge.
But we have each other. And together as us, our future is not so hard to imagine. Technology is advancing rapidly. Artificial Intelligence is already part of our everyday life in our phones. AI is being designed to occupy more of the mundane jobs in life. And the reality is they will do the dangerous, dull work and we will have to do the deeper spiritual work that insists on asking us, “why, oh why, do I live and die.”
Art will not be a social service it will be a spiritual science.
And while religion has been a social structure that once had a top placing in creating our world it will be replaced by finishing the line: THE ART OF…
The art of conversation
The art of deep thinking
The art of knowing God
The art of courage
The art of grace
The art of greatness
The art of compliance
The art of mystery
The art of earth
The art of silence
The art of body
The art of words…
This will be the important work we get to do when we are no longer slaves to our own fear for our survival.
That period is truly over but we will not easily let go of the past industrial systems.
There are many institutions that have burrowed into the systems ways, but that will soon change too. People are what make systems. When people are well, mind body soul the systems are well. Well people force changes that bring more wellness. That’s the mathematics of it.
We make these visions because we now need more than jobs to pay banks. We need the riches of our past for our future. Our visions are rising faster than ever before and this is advancing the science, the technology and our aspirations.
These paintings are visions of things to come. Change is not always comfortable, and these paintings are symbols of the great protection that we will need when we least expect to need protection.
The most important person to protect you is you, and these paintings symbolise that the greatest tool of our illustrious future is our own hand doing the best that it can with what it has before it.
Everything I have made for this show has a practical use and my slide show is a vision of how our ancient knowledge is our greatest future.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” - James Baldwin.
Tena koutou.
Tena koutou.
Tena koutou.