Jonathan Smart Gallery is delighted to present Kulimoe'anga Stone Maka's first exhibition with the gallery, Kumi E Manatu (Finding Black Tapa Memories).
Following Maka's selection for Brook Andrew's 2020 Sydney Biennale (NIRIN), and tapa in two recent exhibitions at Christchurch Art Gallery/Te Puna O Waiwhetu, (Toga mo Bolata'ane and Te Wheke), this project presents both tapa and new paintings.
The recently completed large black tapa Tufunga Fulutamakia, (2020), ruminates on the future for Pasifika artists, a journey that might build upon the past to navigate ways through an increasingly intense sometimes dark future. The new paintings describe space through dense layers of smoke, brushed in parts to reveal pathways of light – paths sometimes overlain with (actual) spiders' webs spray-painted mainly in red and blue. There is a delicate and very beautiful cosmology at play here. Both tapa and the paintings are discussed in more detail in the short-filmed interview between artist and gallerist, offered in the exhibition video.
Press release courtesy Jonathan Smart Gallery.
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New Zealand
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