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_{Images:  Top, Sione Tuívailala Monū, Lanu Moana is the Warmest Colour (still) 2024. Single-channel HD video, duration 27 mins 31 secs. Courtesy of the artist; bottom, Edith Amituanai, Vaimoe (still) 2024. Single-channel HD video, duration 16 mins. Courtesy of the artist.}

Please join us Wednesday 4 December, 5 - 7pm for the launch of Sione Tuívailala Monū and Edith Amituanai: Toloa Tales, our final opening event for 2024.

In 2023, Tāmaki Makaurau-based artists Sione Tuívailala Monū (Aotearoa, Australia, Tonga) and Edith Amituanai (Aotearoa, Sāmoa) travelled to Sāmoa to celebrate a friend’s participation in the Miss Sāmoa Fa’afafine Pageant. Joined by cinematographer Ralph Brown, they produced two distinct yet intimately connected films during the visit, each reflecting on ideas of migration, identity, belonging, and exploring what it means to return to an ancestral homeland.

The title Toloa Tales references a Sāmoan proverb – ‘e lele le toloa ae ma‘au lava i le vai’, (the toloa (duck) flies far but will always return to water). It suggests that no matter how far one journeys there is always a desire to come home.

The exhibition Sione Tuivailala Monū and Edith Amituanai: Toloa Tales is toured by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

_{Image: Maxim Va'a, Samoa. ‘Many residential areas are heavily affected by floods, like this house in Taumeasina village'}  

People in the Pacific have lived in harmony with the ocean and land for thousands of years. Today, however, unprecedented challenges are faced as climate change threatens the environment, culture, and way of life in the region. We are living in a climate crisis and need to intensify our global efforts to address it. Despite being some of the lowest carbon-emitting countries, the Pacific islands are among the most vulnerable to its effects and often the hardest hit.

The photographs in this exhibition were created as part of the UK Government’s Pacific Climate Photography Competition, inviting people across the Pacific to document the everyday impacts of climate change in their communities. These images provide a powerful and authentic glimpse into the realities of climate change in the Pacific, showing a stark picture of the challenges island nations face while capturing the urgent threat to their very existence.

In the Pacific we are witnessing rising sea levels, warming oceans, and increasingly severe tropical storms causing coral death, crop loss, and the gradual disappearance of land. However, this exhibition also conveys resilience and hope, as Pacific communities, often marginalised in global discussions, are positioned at the forefront of climate action.

Trouble in Paradise challenges us to reconsider the Pacific’s vital role in addressing global climate change. This exhibition has travelled across Aotearoa New Zealand and was recently presented at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2024 in Samoa, bringing these urgent and compelling stories to leaders of the Commonwealth and amplifying the voices of those most affected by climate change.

This exhibition at Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery marks the next phase of its journey, as this collection of photographs are long-term loaned to AUT and exhibited across its campuses, to inspire its staff and students in their teaching, learning and research.

Exhibition room sheet