Tautai presents Māori artist Tracey Tawhiao in a new exhibition Taputapu Ātea

Tracey Tawhiao, Taputapu Ātea, 2022

Multidisciplinary contemporary artist Tracey Tawhiao (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Tuwharetoa and Whakatōhea) presents a new solo exhibition Taputapu Ātea at Tautai Gallery, opening Friday 28 October.

Taputapu Ātea is an installation of new paintings and digital works that explore the artificially intelligent future of our culture’s materialisation.  Tracey explores Indigenous Futurism, and symbolises how Māori philosophy can give us a new/old way of looking at the future through creativity in relationship with each other and with nature.

Using everyday materials, such as tarpaulin, Tracey creates an installation visioning our future in an artificially intelligent world; the Art of it is represented in low tech materials and the Art Gallery acts as a storage facility for the tools we will need in our future. Art is our tool.

The painted sculptural forms are accompanied by digital paintings as projections of our whakapapa future with advanced technology both material and spiritual.

“This is what a Taputapu Ātea can do for our future. Provide space for our most essential visions,” says Tracey Tawhiao.

“The abundant wealth of our material culture in the storerooms of museums here and all over the world, give a deep feeling of the immense loss of an entire civilisation. Yet the greater losses remain immaterial and invisible, the loss of language, the loss of spirituality, the loss of ritual and ceremonial practice, the loss of Pā living, the loss of our schools, our lore, the loss of our ancestral beliefs.”

“But by whakapapa, we are still here, and we only have to remember by whakapapa it’s all inside us. This is where our future lies, inside us. We are our whakapapa all the way to our primal parents Ranginui and Papatūānuku and beyond. We must plant that knowledge inside us, the soil from where all our gifts grow.”

Taputapu Ātea will also include a collaborative mural with the public. A painting of our collective energy and act as the symbolic fuel necessary for our great future. 

Gloriana Meyers, Tautai Gallery Manager and interim co-Director says, “As one of Aotearoa’s leading contemporary Māori artists, Tracey Tawhiao’s mahi has been at the leading edge of contemporary arts practice for over three decades. Her research in Indigenous Futurism is further explored in these new works. Tautai is excited to awhi Tracey in the space as we celebrate our close connection across the Moana as people of the Pacific.”

Tracey Tawhiao’s Taputapu Atea is on at Tautai Gallery until 17 December 2022.

Exhibition details:

Tracey Tawhiao: Taputapu Atea
Exhibition Preview: Friday 28 October 2022, 6.30 – 9PM (doors open 6PM)
Exhibition Runs: 28 October – 17 December 2022
Tautai Gallery, Level 1, 300 Karangahape Road, Auckland Central
Open 10am–4pm,Tuesday–Friday, and 11am–4pm Saturday

Tracey Tawhiao – Artist Talk
Saturday 29 October, 2:00PM
Talking about the future of us and our world in art and artificial intelligence. 

Community Mural
29 Oct - 17 Dec?
Let’s make ourselves some essential art for our future.