Matariki - "Toi Mairangi & Toi Houkura"
18 June 2009
Contemporary Maori art students from Toihoukura at Tairawhiti Polytechnic in Gisborne and Toimairangi at Te Wananga o Aotearoa in Hastings found themselves working together restoring Ngati Kahungunu carvings during last Novembers Takitimu Festival held in Hastings. From this conservation workshop Sandy Adsett encouraged the students to network with each other as emerging Maori artists from the Te Tairawhiti eastern seaboard region and beyond.

“I whakapapa back to Gisborne and Wairoa”, says Toimairangi student Roseanne Brown of Nga Ariki and Ngati Kahungunu descent, “The opportunity to visit each others school, to work alongside each other out in the community and to exhibit our art are great challenges for us to meet.”

The Toimairangi – Toihoukura – Matariki exhibition marks the artists gathering together with their painting, sculpture and contemporary weaving to pay homage to their ancestors, community and region with aspirations for the future.

As part of his study at Toimairangi, Wilray Hikuwera Price of Ngati Kahungunu descent is influenced by the art and legacy of the Late John Bevan Ford,

“From looking at John’s korowai over the land drawings I’ve been trying to express in my painting the taking back and ownership of who we are. We cannot disappear into the fluff of everything else. I want us to cover the land with our artwork and culture.”
From The Big Idea website.

P.S.--Thank you, Luke; I had not heard that story before.