Working predominantly with performance and film, the elegiac installations of Shannon Te Ao explore fraught dynamics of indigeneity, language, and loss. Te Ao draws on a range of existing literary material including Māori lyrical sources such as whakataukī and waiata, as well as poetic and lyrical texts from popular culture. Richly layered, Te Ao's works enact a compression wherein past and present co-exist, and daily life is inextricably linked to multifarious social, cultural, and philosophical Histories.
Read MoreShannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) was born in Sydney in 1978, graduated with a BFA (Hons) from University of Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts in 2009, and with a MFA (First Class Honours) from the College of Creative Arts at Massey University Wellington in 2016.
Recent solo exhibitions include: my life as a tunnel, The Dowse Art Museum, Wellington (2018); With the sun aglow, I have my pensive moods, The Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh, and Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Auckland (2017); Tenei ao kawa nei, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu (2017); Two shoots that stretch far out, Taipei Contemporary Art Centre (2017); Te huka o te tai, Artspace, Auckland (2017); Untitled (McCahon House Studies), City Gallery Wellington (2017); Untitled (malady), 2016, Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington (2016); and A torch and a light (cover), Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Auckland (2015).
Te Ao's work has been included in group exhibitions both within New Zealand and internationally, including: The Subject in the Land, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2016); and You Imagine What You Desire, 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014).
In 2016 Te Ao was nominated for and awarded the Walters Prize.
