Tracy Keith  (Ngāpuhi) was raised in Tokoroa, one of many small towns established in New Zealand to serve industries including paper mills, smelters and freezing works. 

Keith remembers the influence the timber industry had on his hometown’s largely Māori and Polynesian workforce, and his works embody their industrial foundations through embellishments evoking whenua and machinery.

Molten glazes and metallic hues give each of Keith’s vessels a unique character. Their cracks and ruptures created by the raku-firing process are a physical representation of the breaks from ancestral lands that many families endured in order to find work. 

By evoking the stresses and fractures that come with working in such factories, and from living in such communities, Keith’s rugged forms can be read as a contemporary experience of Te Ao Māori. 

Keith writes: “The whakapapa of industry is in our blood. People don’t always live by their tūrangawaewae because they follow work, and this can lead to the deterioration of culture. The uneven surfaces of my ceramics refer to the weathered structure of the whenua and to an industry that has been destructive to our people.” 

Tracy Keith gained an MFA in 2013 from Auckland’s Whitecliffe College of Art and Design.