Downstairs

15 April – 27 April

'HE HOKINGA MAI - Bringing My Art Home'

JOANNE BLACK

The artworks I create are from my re imagined tūpuna with the intent to embrace diverse cultural elements with dignity. Highlighted are the challenges to ancestral voices from the past. Colonisation is an unseen process that cloaks our bodies. I desire to promote a Māori world view where mainstream views currently dominate. 

My reimagined Tūpuna portraits, that combine my Māori heritage and influences, are of the Renaissance style and are instinctively reimagined from the guidance of my tūpuna.

In my artworks there is a mixture of delight and repulsion and this is my intention that I apply to my imagery.

The mirror image reflects a hidden inner truth.  Thus, the image that appears can be thought of as more revealing than the mere surface appearance.  The mirrored surface gives the intent of a reflection of ourselves, and our gaze that is returned by the very gaze that looks.  We watch ourselves watching ourselves.