HANNAH IRELAND

MAIOHA KARA

JAMIE TE HEUHEU

TYRONE TE WAA

One of the positive things about having to stay home during a COVID lockdown is the time you have (when not panicking) to think and read. And it’s funny how the answer to a question you’ve been pondering, arrives when you least expect it. During lockdown I finished reading Witi Ihimaera’s memoir, Native Son. I was so moved by the wisdom and wairua of his writing I decided to go back to some of his earlier works. And as I scanned the bookshelf I saw the spine of the short story collection he published in 1977:

The New Net Goes Fishing. 
 
And just like that … the long-awaited title of our next exhibition.
 
Ka pu te ruha, ka hao te rangatahi can be translated as When the old net is cast aside the new net goes fishing.

It refers to the next generation being encouraged to consider the contribution they can make to their whanau, their people and the wider culture. It’s not “Haere ra old people” but rather, “Time to step up, young people.” 
 
Each of these young Māori artists is doing just that. Each is beginning to make their contribution, each is exploring their unique whakapapa, and each has the potential to sustain a long and satisfying career.

---

HANNAH IRELAND

Hannah Ireland (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) is an early-career artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. She graduated in 2020 with a BA (Psychology) and a BFA (First Class Honours) from the University of Auckland. 
Ireland’s practice is engaged with perceptions of the self in relation to concepts which include the subconscious and conscious mind, identity and intuition, and the consequences of active social ecosystems. 

Ireland presents a suite of three artworks, each reverse-painted in acrylic, ink and watercolour on a recycled glass window.

Ireland was a finalist in the inaugural King Tūheitia Portraiture Award at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery. She was also the winner of the 2021 Supreme Award at the Molly Morpeth Canaday Awards in Whakatane, where guest judge Karl Chitham described her painting as “captivating from the outset … it is the urgency and emotion of the making and the evocative process of the viewing that makes the work so memorable.”

---

MAIOHA KARA

Maioha Kara (Waikato, Ngāti Kahungunu, Te Arawa, Ngāti Porou) is an early-career artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. She completed an MFA at Massey University in 2021. Her artworks draw on the narratives of te ao Māori to examine our relationship with the natural world.

Kara makes shallow excavations into the surface of her shaped wooden artworks, creating geometric patterns filled with shimmering glitter that draw on the repetition and symmetry of toi Maori.

Writing in the current issue of Art Collector magazine, curator Hanahiva Rose describes Kara’s works as representing “the cosmological connections which define the relationship between the natural world and matauranga Māori (Maori knowledge systems). Their glittering patterns are guided by the rhythms and cycles of human and non-human life.”

Maioha Kara is represented by Laree Payne Gallery www.lareepaynegallery.com

---

JAMIE TE HEUHEU

Jamie Te Heuheu (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) is an early-career artist based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. He graduated in 2020 with a BFA (First Class Honours) from the University of Canterbury. 

He contributes a large 2m x 1.5m painting in acrylic on canvas to the exhibition alongside two suites of smaller works; the first in oil on jute, the second in ink, gesso, and oil-stick on canvas. 

Te Heuheu describes his practice as an ongoing study in the formal qualities of abstract art-making. Its emphasis is upon materiality, process and minimalism. He is one of the founders of THE DEN, an artist-run space in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

---

TYRONE TE WAA

Tyrone Te Waa (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Hine) is an early-career artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He graduated in 2019 with a Bachelor of Creative Enterprise from Unitec and is currently completing a Master of Creative Practice.

Te Waa has created five head-like sculptures from fabric, wood and thread. They are installed on a custom-made wrapped architectural structure attached to the gallery walls.

Describing his practice as both “queer” and “untamed” in terms of aesthetic, Te Waa characterises his art as “a tangled mess of personal experience, lingering thoughts, sentiments, intuition and rubbish.” Drawing inspiration from the Italian Arte Povera movement of the 1960s Te Waa collects material for his work from his surroundings and forages the pavements during Auckland’s inorganic waste collection days. 

“Back in Taumarunui where I grew up”, he says, “I would be foraging for watercress and pikopiko instead. The process of looking and finding is critical to my work; it’s like foraging bits and pieces of my personal identity and squashing them all together.”

TMG is grateful to Reece King and to SANC Gallery www.sancgallery.com

Photography by Kallan MacLeod