Influx: roomsheet

_{Shane Tu'ihalangingie, Get your mind right, 2014.}

Since Paul Tangata, the first artist of Pacific heritage to graduate from the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1965, there has been an influx of Pacific students training across art institutions. Many of these students have gone on to shape, and push the boundaries of, contemporary art in Aotearoa.

Influx marks a moment where student practices within an academic context find a renewed sense of purpose, embedded in their wider political and social field. Artists such as Jasmine Togo Brisby draws our attention to the legacy of colonisation and the complexities of the South Sea Islander identity. Further provocations can be seen in work by Pati Solomona Tyrell which makes visible Pacific narratives of LGBTQI experiences.

This exhibition brings together a diverse range of artworks that reflects tertiary practice as a time where many artists begin to develop a sense of political agency. Collectively these works push and pull our understanding of the Pacific with a scope that is much larger than New Zealand.

Influx is curated by Ane Tonga and marks the eighth Tautai tertiary exhibition.

www.tautai.org

Influx (installation view), 2016. Photo: Sam Hartnett.

Jasmine Togo Brisby, Re:finery, 2016, CSR paper bags. Photo: Sam Hartnett.

John Vea, Untitled, 2015, five parking meters. Photo: Sam Hartnett.

Louisa Afoa, Coconut Oil and Beneath the surface,  2016, video, 4:42 minutes, 5:34 minutes. Photo: Sam Hartnett.

Pelepesite Tofilau and Rhueben Meredith, Umu Pack,  2016, digital and flatbed printing, card, paper. Photo: Sam Hartnett.

Valasi Leota-Seiuli, They sailed through on foreign white clouds, 2016, plaster, transferred image. Photo: Sam Hartnett.