Le Malelega A Le To’elau Art Auction

23 artworks sold, $5000 raised: aoga auction success!

I volunteered to organise an art auction to help raise funds for my daughter Lanuola’s daycare centre, Le Malelega a le To’elau ECE, and it was beautiful and rewarding, and the funds raised blew our target out the water!

Fourteen friends and allies from my art world generously donated 23 works ranging from illustration, assemblage, photography and painting. The works were installed and shown for two weeks prior to auction night at Lime Espresso Bar & Eatery in Ōtāhuhu, South Auckland. Auction Night attracted a full house of punters, who were treated to a special menu of tasty treats created by chef Claudia Rakoia and her team.

Staff from Le Malelega a le To’elau finished work and came straight over to the venue to help welcome, register, wrap artwork, process payments and serve guests – they looked beautiful and did an amazing job. Earlier in the month, they had worked with the children at the Centre to paint the bidding paddles which were used on the night.

Our MC, my dear friend Yolande Ah Chong, kept our crowd entertained and inspired; she added so much value, and I reflected throughout the night what a phenomenal woman she is!

It was incredibly rewarding to see so much of this beautiful work being purchased by local artists, members of the South Auckland community, parents and keen supporters from the Pacific arts and culture ecosystem here in Manukau!

It was a privilege to do this project in many ways, especially to develop a working relationship with Lime Espresso Bar & Eatery, where I plan to produce some more exhibitions and interesting events over the coming months.

I’m super grateful to Konile Fusitua for his photography on the night – I’m a keen follower of this young creative! Check him out on Instagram here.

Joana Monolagi

Mothers Love (2016)
Mixed media assemblage, 304x609mm, stretched canvas

Joana Monolagi has been creating Fijian arts for about 20 years. She was born in the town of Ba, Viti Levu, Fiji, moved to Aotearoa New Zealand in 1978, and now lives in Pakuranga. Monolagi enjoys working with arts from her Fijian heritage such as masi (Fijian barkcloth) printing, creating Fijian costumes, teaching meke (dance) and telling Fijian stories. In 1990 she started to weave and learn to print masi. When Monolagi began experimenting with masi printing she drew on her memories of watching women in Fiji making and printing it. She taught herself how to create stencils for printing onto masi and enjoys making new stencils which she adds to her collection. Monolagi experiments with new materials available in Aotearoa New Zealand, combining the ‘old’ and the ‘new’. She values the importance of sharing the knowledge and skills that she has, which she does by running workshops for women’s groups in the Fijian community. Monolagi is the Fijian coordinator for the Fiji village at Auckland’s annual Pasifika Festival. She has held this role since 2001 and sees it as another way of showcasing Fijian culture and heritage through the arts.

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Rosanna Raymond

Pupula Ma Nifo (2014)
Photography: Kerry Brown, A0 digital poster print

Adornments: Rosanna Raymond, Niwhai Tupaea
Materials: Eel Skin, Sword Fish Vertebrae, Perspex Beads, Seeds, Wild Boars Tusks, Wild Boar Jaw

This is an image from the first ever solo show i had in Aotearoa, Dead Pigs Don’t Grow On Trees, i couldn’t afford to produce digital photographic prints so did some posters…so this is a total one off opportunity specially for Le Malelega supporters…it was the last work i made in London with Kerry Brown…and end of an error..oops era….hehehehehehe…Would The Real Tusk Please Stand Up.

Sistar S’pacific aka Rosanna Raymond, an innovator of the contemporary Pasifika art scene as a long-standing member of the art collective the Pacific Sisters, and founding member of the SaVAge K’lub. Raymond has achieved international renown for her performances, installations, body adornment, and spoken word. A published writer and poet, her works are held by museums and private collectors throughout the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Raymond’s practice works with people, spaces and things to activate a dynamic relationship between them, to realise and reshape the ta-va duality. This is a choreographic process that extends beyond the frames of art, into both domestic routines and ritual protocols. It includes self-adornment and group enactments, activating space and collapsing time using the body and the genealogical matter.

A dynamic artist, her work is consistent in its celebration of Pasifika and the engagements it invokes and evokes; whether between museum collections and contemporary Pacific art or museums and urban spaces.

Solo exhibitions: Glass Walls Dark Seas, Dahlem Ethnological Museum, Berlin, Germany (2014); ‘Art and the Body’, Fiji National Museum, Suva, Fiji (2014); ‘Dead pigs don’t grow on trees’, Mangere Arts Centre, Auckland (2014)

Group exhibitions: SaVAge K’lub Room, APT8 Brisbane 2015-2016‘Made in Oceania’, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Kulturen Der Welt, Cologne (2013); ‘Towards the Morning Sun’, Campbelltown Arts Centre, (2013); ‘Niu Pasifik Warriors’, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney (2011); ‘Fashioning the Mana’, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2010); ‘Pasifika Styles’, Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK (2009); Biennale of Sydney (with the Pacific Sisters) (2000); Pacific Wave Festival, Sydney (1998)

Anita Jacobsen

Red Tape (2014) by Anita Jacobsen, 500x500mm, C type print, framed.

Red Tape (2014)
C type print, framed

Raised in Papakura, South Auckland, Anita Jacobsen is an Auckland-based photographer of Norwegian and Samoan descent.

In 2009 Anita completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in photography at Whitecliffe College of Art & Design, she then went on to gain a Master of Fine Arts from Whitecliffe in 2014. Anita has exhibited nationally and internationally. She was a finalist in the 22nd Annual Wallace Art Awards in 2013 and in the same year was a finalist in the Auckland Festival of Photography, and was selected for the Pingyao International Festival of Photography, in Shanxi China.

Sourced from Tautai Trust Artist Profile, read more here: http://www.tautai.org/artist/anita-jacobsen/

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Pati Solomona Tyrell

Godhead Aitu (2016)
Digital prints, framed

Pati Solomona Tyrell is an interdisciplinary visual artist with a strong focus on performance. Utilizing lens-based media he creates visual outcomes that are centered around ideas of urban Pacific queer identity. He has shown work at Fresh Gallery Otara, PAH Homestead and most recently at the Pingyao International Photography Festival. Tyrell is a co-founder of the arts collective FAFSWAG. Currently he is a third year student enrolled in the Bachelor of Creative Arts at Manukau Institute of Technology, Otara. Pati is originally from Kirikiriroa, Waikato but is now based in Maungarei, Tāmaki Makaurau.

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Frances Hansen

H E R E (2012)
Acrylic on found print, 750x550mm, framed

More on Frances Hansen: franceshansen.co.nz

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Raymond Sagapolutele

The Only Time (2016)
Colour inkjet print, 304x152mm, framed

A study in growing up as part of a culture with a rich heritage but not having any real connection to it beyond ceremonial trappings at particular events. This is one of several images based around the emotions of the artist as he navigates through his 45 years of being in and out of the shadows cast by family in the fading light of their memories of Samoan heritage and the rising dawn of the life Aotearoa has offered his generation.

Raymond Sagapolutele is a Aotearoan born Samoan artist and self-taught photographer. He has worked for numerous editorial publications and exhibited widely in a range of group and solo exhibitions around Auckland spanning the last 10 years and is a part of the graffiti creative collective known as TMD.

“The narrative may change but the intent is always the same – honest dialogue with the viewer. My style of photography is based on observation with a little bit of the unconventional, this is not to confuse or frustrate but it is a method by which I empty my head of all the stories contained within.”

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Torika Bolatagici

Left: Burotu (place of departed spirits), Viti, 2014.
500x500mm, 100% cotton rag paper, framed

Right: Saint Peter (the camouflage act), Barbados, 2016.
297x42mm, 100% cotton rag paper, framed

Torika Bolatagici was born in Tasmania and spent her early years living between Hobart, Sydney and her father’s village – Suvavou, Fiji.

Torika is a lecturer in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, Melbourne where she teaches contemporary theory and practice. Her PhD ‘Somatic Sotia: Commodity, Agency and the Fijian Military Body’ was recently submitted for examination at the School of Art and Design, University of New South Wales.

Torika works across a range of media, including photography, video and mixed media site-specific installation. Her interdisciplinary practice investigates the relationship between visual culture, human ecology, postcolonial counternarrative and visual historiography of the Black Pacific. She is interested in exploring the tensions and intersections between gender, embodied knowledge, commodification, migration and globalization.

Her work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Mexico City, Yogyakarta and throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at local and international conferences and symposia about the representation of mixed-race identity; Pacific arts practice in Australia and Fiji; representations of teachers and teaching in cinema; and gender and militarism in the Pacific.

In her role as Symposium coordinator for the Contemporary Pacific Arts Festival in 2013 and 2014, Torika curated multiple panels to extend the discourse around contemporary Pacific arts practice in Australia and invited speakers to reflect on themes such as art and activism, museums, collecting and curating, cultural appropriation and contemporary practice. She also produced the symposium publication Mana Motu (2013/14).

As well as 12 years experience teaching at tertiary level, Torika also has also facilitated youth arts workshops for the local Pacific community. Including Pasifik Young Artists (Léuli Eshraghi) (2013); Patterns and Portraiture (Salote Tawale) at SIGNAL youth arts (2014) and was the Creative Director of the Pacific Photobook Project (2014-15).

Torika presents the Community Reading Room – a pop-up destination for research, community discussion and engagement around international visual arts and culture, with a particular focus on contemporary art and theory from Oceania, Africa and the Americas. The Community Reading Room has appeared at Colour Box Studio (2013) and the Footscray Community Arts Centre (2014).

Follow Torika’s work on Academia.edu

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Tanu Gago

FALENCY, MOE, NANA
LAURYN, LUISA, SINI, HILDA
VICKY, GENEVIEVE
From “Tama’ita’i Pasifika Mao’i” (2014)
The 2014 Auckland Festival of Photography Annual Commission
Digital prints, 297 x 420 mm, framed

Born in Sāmoa and raised in Manukau City, Tanu Gago belongs to a large family with a diverse cultural background. Gago draws on his unique perspective and life in South Auckland to make art that directly engages with urban social issues including the fluid nature of ethnic and gender identities. In his 2010 solo exhibition You Love My Fresh at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Gago presented a projection constructed in three parts. The first work titled You Love My Fresh featured a composite of black and white urban photography emblazoned with bold yellow text. Phrases including ‘Your cultural experience makes me cynical, violent and resentful’ and ‘I feel redundant as a citizen of your first world’ bounced and shuddered across the screen, demanding attention. In his most recent body of work Avanoa o Tama, 2012 Gago presented a series of photographs of Polynesian men which destabilise preconceived notions of gender and sexuality. Gago challenges the social and cultural expectations surrounding the representation of gender by concentrating on the ambiguous and performative nature of masculinity and sexual identity.

Gago studied performing arts at Unitec Institute of Technology and received a Bachelor of Arts in performing arts with a major in writing and directing for screen.

Twelves questions, NZ Herald (May 27, 2014)

Tyla Vaeau Ta’ufo’ou

Sina ma le Tuna (2012)
Ink and colour pencil on paper, 280x230mm, framed

Tyla Vaeau Ta’ufo’ou is a visual artist and tatau practitioner of Samoan (Sale’a’aumua, Aleipata and Safune, Savai’i) and Pakeha descent. In 2009 she graduated from the University of Auckland with a BA in Art History and a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Since then she has continued to develop her tatau practice, currently working at Karanga Ink – a Maori, Pacific, Indigenous tattoo studio. Tyla also recently completed a Masters of Arts in Art History focussing on contemporary Samoan tatau as intertwined with notions of travel and migration. Working in a variety of areas, Tyla’s practice explores cross-sections between representation, tatau, diasporic identity and cultural heritage.