Tim Melville

Salome Tanuvasa’s most recent body of work, Autotelic, comprises a series of new paintings in acrylic on card alongside a series of impasto works on both canvas and stretched calico. These separate artistic enquiries are linked by Tanuvasa’s awareness of the ‘flow state’ required in order for her mark-making to be successful.

‘Flow’ is a psychological term coined to encompass the experience of performing an activity while fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus, full involvement, and enjoyment of the process. It is characterised by complete absorption in the activity resulting in the transformation of one’s sense of time.

Tanuvasa describes her state of flow as “intense and concentrated moments of action and awareness. Feedback and conversation with my chosen materials, actions, colours, marks and compositions are synchronised as I try to form a language of attention. Producing work and fully immersing my mind-state can only occur when the essence of enjoyment and satisfaction is in balance and in tune with the object being made in the time that is at hand.”

Salome Tanuvasa completed a Master of Fine Arts at Elam in 2014. She has made shows in Auckland, Wellington and Sydney as well as in Shanghai, where in 2018 she was awarded the YAF Creative Award by the China Academy of Art.

Photography by Kallan MacLeod