#FreshArtMarket: Recognising the potential of South Auckland’s creative entrepreneurs

on December 11, 2013

MEDIA RELEASE
11 December 2013

A new pilot event at Fresh Gallery Otara aims to showcase the potential of creative entrepreneurship in South Auckland.

Fresh Art Market is a lively pop-up market day presenting a diverse range of creative products and services including fashion design, nail artistry, event and project management, homeware and photography alongside the more traditional paintings and prints.

Event organiser, Ema Tavola says, “Fresh Art Market is a microcosm of South Auckland’s creative ecology – our artists are not just exhibiting in galleries but earning a living in a range of ways from photographing and designing events, painting murals, facilitating workshops and creating works of art in hair and nails.”

The event is in part influenced from Tavola’s involvement with a colleague from the Indonesian city of Bandung, well regarded for its innovative creative economy. Dian Gesuri has been in New Zealand completing a Master of Arts Management degree at AUT University; the two have spent six weeks sharing ideas about creative entrepreneurship and sector development in an informal residency at Tavola’s home in South Auckland.

Gesuri will deliver a presentation at Fresh Art Market from 9 – 10am on what South Auckland can gain from harnessing creativity and community, collaboration and commerce. Her talk will introduce some inspiring models of creative entrepreneurship that have contributed to social change in Bandung.

Gesuri says, “The driving force of Bandung’s creative economy is people and community, something South Auckland is rich in; the potential for creative economic growth here is significant.”

Stallholders will be offering specials and discounts across all products and services from manicure and pedicure gift vouchers to couture garments, t-shirts, portrait photography, artworks and hand-made accessories.

Tavola says, “This is a perfect time to support local creative entrepreneurs – their products and services are priced to sell and locally designed and produced gifts and treats are an investment in our local creative economy. This will be a truly inspiring day!”

Artists / Creative Entreprenuers involved: Leah Espie Photography, FAF SWAG, Tui and Sulieti Gillies, Tepora Malo, Nesian Nails, The Roots Creative Entreprenuers, Czarina Wilson Design.

Event details
When: Saturday 14 December, 9am – 2pm
Where: Fresh Gallery Otara, 5/46 Fairmall, Otara Town Centre, South Auckland

Contact
Ema Tavola – Event Organiser
Mb 027 5779369 / Email pimpi@pimpiknows.com / Twitter @ColourMeFiji / Web www.PimpiKnows.com

#FreshArtMarket, Saturday 14 December

FRESH ART MARKET is a lively pop-up market day presenting a diverse range of creative practice and free public programme events at South Auckland’s notorious Fresh Gallery Otara!

The event draws together a diverse range of creative practitioners from fine artists to activists, object makers and writers to fashion designers. With everything priced to sell, FRESH ART MARKET is an ideal one stop shop for conscious, hand-made, locally designed gifts and treats!

Stall holders include: Czarina Wilson Design, Leah Espie Photography, Tui Gillies, Luisa Tora and Molly Rangiwai-McHale, Tepora Malo, The Roots Creative Entrepreneurs and more!

"Dear Culture Vulture" (2013) by Luisa Tora

Throughout the day, a series of public programme events will take place alongside the Market:

From 9-10am, join visiting arts manager, Dian Ika Gesuri for an inspiring discussion on what Auckland can learn from harnessing creativity, community, collaboration, innovation and commerce, introducing some amazing models of creative entrepreneurship that contribute to social change in the city of Bandung, Indonesia.

At 11am, check out a series of short films including Luisa Tora’s “Home Videos” (2013) and join the film makers for a Q&A.

From 1-2pm, exhibiting artists Sam Afu and ‘Ahota’e’iloa Toetu’u are delivering a free painting workshop inspired by their current exhibition, Ua gau le sila, tuku ki Manono on at Fresh Gallery Otara until 21 December.

Keep an eye on the Facebook event page for updates and specials or send us an enquiry here:

#2girls1conference Art Auction: Tepora Malo

Tepora Malo

Title: REAL TALK series
Date: 2013
Medium: Screenprint on 300gsm Archival Paper
Dimensions: 594x420mm [unframed]

Born in 1992 and raised in South Auckland, Tepora Malo is a Samoan visual artist studying at the Faculty of Creative Arts at Manukau Institute of Technology. Noted for her innovative mash-up design style combining Island florals with animal print and urban iconography, Malo collaborated with Leilani Kake and Ema Tavola to produce the REAL TALK T-shirt design for the #2girls1conference campaign.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Creative Arts, Malo plans to develop her print and design practice expanding into fashion and textiles.

Back to the #2girls1conference Art Auction Online Catalogue

#GROUNDED Festival of Sustainable Arts, #Otara

on July 2, 2013

Leilani Kake and I had a stall at the GROUNDED Festival of Sustainable Arts pop-up market last weekend, hosted by Manukau Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Creative Arts in Otara, South Auckland.

The #2girls1conference fundraising campaign t-shirt is designed by senior student, Tepora Malo, currently studying to complete a Bachelor of Creative Arts. Tepora undertook an internship with Leilani and I on the #2girls1conference campaign, overseeing the process of crowdfunding, social media marketing and leading the design and hand-printing of the limited edition t-shirt.

Tepora’s design employed a complex printing process that presented a fairly massive learning curve for all involved! The outcome is gorgeous and represents multiple hours of trial and error, laughs, sweat and tears!

We produced a limited range of 70 t-shirts and 20 canvas tote bags – both are selling fast; sales enquiries can be directed to Ema using the Contact page here.

The PIMPI fans are seasonally misguided, but on sale for NZ$60.

Images courtesy of MIT Faculty of Creative Arts.

#2girls1conference Limited Edition Art T-shirts, proudly made in #SouthAuckland!

Leilani Kake and my fundraising efforts to get to the Pacific Arts Association International Symposium in August are gaining real momentum!

A 25-day campaign on the New Zealand crowdfunding website, PledgeMe was an enormous success – we were overwhelmed with the support from our communities and networks on and offline. This initial fundraising effort attracted over $4000 of support which covers the bulk of our return airfares to Canada! A HUGE Thank You to everyone who pledged, shared, liked and retweeted to support our cause.

Part of our fundraising effort has been the design and production of a limited edition art t-shirt which we were able to hand-print using the excellent facilities at Manukau Institute of Technology. Tepora Malo, a third year student studying at the Faculty of Creative Arts worked as our intern on the project – we all learned a lot about the four color printing process and talked for long hours about art making and money making. Otara artist, activist and recent graduate, Amiria Puia-Taylor was our first choice to model the t-shirt for us. Her position on community awareness and artistic empowerment is particularly refreshing and she definitely represents the concept of REAL TALK! We also benefited from the very promising expertise of first year student, Sean Atavenitia who created our promotional photography. The whole initiative has been a really rewarding, Made in South Auckland experience!

The limited edition #2girls1conference art t-shirt is on sale now for $50!

We also have a limited amount of canvas shoulder bags for $30 and $15 repurposed jumbo tote bags from the slightly imperfect printed t-shirts!

Come find us at the GROUNDED Festival of Sustainable Arts Pop-Up Market from 10am – 5pm on Saturday 29 June, 50 Lovegrove Crescent, Otara, South Auckland, or click here to submit a sales enquiry.

Massive Support for #2girls1conference

on June 8, 2013

We’re blown away with the support for the #2girls1conference campaign currently running on PledgeMe!

Every dollar pledged is helping Leilani Kake and I with travel and participation costs for the 11th International Symposium of the Pacific Arts Association in Vancouver this coming August! We’re less than $500 away from hitting our crowdfunding target with 12 days still to go. We’re hoping the #2girls1conference campaign (including crowdfunding, art t-shirt and auction) will generate a minimum of $6000 in total, so every dollar we make on PledgeMe effectively takes a little bit of pressure off our other fundraising initiatives.

We’ve had a great week generating awareness for what we’re doing; on Tuesday, Adrian Evans‘ piece in the Manukau Courier was published. We were reminiscing about our 2009 lecture tour to California and smiling about how many times we refresh the browser permanently open on PledgeMe!

On Wednesday we joined Yolande Ah Chong, the excellent and thoroughly conscious and informed host of Radio531pi‘s Breakfast with Lande show to discuss art making, Pacific audiences, leadership and crowdfunding. It was an awesome opportunity to really thrash out some of the principles and beliefs we have about why Pacific art and South Auckland are important.

The #2girls1conference T-shirt is getting lovingly hand-printed next week using Manukau Institute of Technology’s excellent print studio facilities at the Faculty of Creative Arts. Tepora Malo, a third year student completing the Bachelor of Creative Arts programme, has been an excellent collaborator and intern on this project. We’re excited to be working under her leadership in the printing process.

And we’re absolutely humbled by the generosity of our artist friends who have committed works for our auction! We have some AMAZING pieces that have been part of recent South Auckland and Pacific Art History! A stunning large scale unframed photograph by Tanu Gago, part of his Avanoa o Tama (2012) series and a beautiful suite of video stills from Rebecca Ann Hobbs’ work, Otara at Night. Painters Margaret Aull and Nigel Borell have also donated works and the invitation to make or donate works for the cause also inspired this beautiful collaboration between Molly Rangiwai McHale and Luisa Tora!

Every dollar raised in the #2girls1conference campaign is making us feel more and more excited and empowered knowing that our papers at the Pacific Arts Association in August are supported with massive love and investment from our networks!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

To keep up to date on #2girls1conference campaign and our journey to the PAA, connect on Twitter, Facebook or subscribe to PimpiKnows.com for email updates!

#2girls1conference REAL TALK!

This is the design Leilani Kake and I have helped to develop with our excellent MIT Faculty of Creative Arts intern, Tepora Malo. Created at the Otara-based arts school, this design will be lovingly hand-printed by a team of volunteers using the Faculty’s commercial screen-printing facilities. Our aim is to produce a range of tote bags and t-shirts to support the #2girls1conference fundraising efforts to get Leilani and I to the 11th International Symposium of the Pacific Arts Association (PAA) in Canada this August.

Tepora is in the final year of her Bachelor of Creative Arts and working on the #2girls1conference fundraising campaign as part of a professional practice paper. We love her floral ‘island print’ mash-ups with leopard, zebra, text and cultural iconography and were keen to collaborate on a customised design for the campaign.

From our hashtags and conversations, stories and scribbles, Tepora came up with a design that we love a lot. Zebras, ‘island print’ and camouflage have been recurring themes in my art practice and Leilani has been planning a work using the idea of disruptive coloration for the past few years. Tepora was drawn to the term, REAL TALK, and that is exactly what we intend to take to the PAA!

Leilani and I will also have a stall at the GROUNDED: Festival of Sustainable Arts pop-up art market on Saturday 29 June at MIT Faculty of Creative Arts, 50 Lovegrove Crescent, Otara, South Auckland from 10am – 5pm. We’ll be selling t-shirts, totes and hand-made bits and pieces

Click here to find updates and info on the GROUNDED: Festival of Sustainable Arts

I ❤ Entrepreneurial Pacific Artists

In the past two months I’ve come across a range of art products produced by entrepreneurial Pacific artists – something I love to see! Imagine if entrepreneurship and small business skills were taught at art schools! I love supporting artists who have a head for money-making!

Magnets, bags, lavalava and t-shirts… here is a small selection of some Pacific creative practitioners hustling in Auckland today!

FAF SWAG lavalava designed by Tanu Gago

TabanaYayaTotes by Tabana be Design

T-shirts by Gary Silipa

Magnets by Molly Rangiwai McHale

Magnets by Molly Rangiwai McHale and Luisa Tora

FAF SWAG T-shirts by Tanu Gago

FAF SWAG

FAF SWAG is an online LGBT community honouring Samoan fa’afafine identity. FAF SWAG t-shirts and lavalava are designed by Samoan new media artist, Tanu Gago.

Tabana by Design

Tabana by Design is a collaboration between Martine Stowers and her father. They have collectively produced a range of homeware, totes and make-up bags. They are GORGEOUS!

Tabana by Design on Facebook

The Good, The Bad

The Good, The Bad is the brand of Samoan artist Gary Silipa. I’ve been a fan of his work for a while and love his TGTB Symbol t-shirt.

Tepora Malo

Tepora Malo is currently completing a Bachelor of Creative Arts at Manukau Institute of Technology. In 2012, she printed a series of lavalava and sold them at Otara Market. I came across them and loved them straight away! She now stocks Mangere Arts Centre shop located at the corner of Bader Drive and Orly Ave, Mangere, South Auckland.

Magnets by Molly Rangiwai McHale

Molly Rangiwai McHale produced a series of magnets featuring illustrations for Auckland’s recent Big Gay Out festival.