A Huge Exhibition of Contemporary Maori Art Is Coming to Auckland
It will be the largest exhibition in the 132-year history of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
Featuring over 300 artworks by 120 Māori artists, Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art will be the largest exhibition in the 132-year history of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. The major exhibition is set to open at the inner city gallery on Saturday, 5 December 2020 and will be free to the public.
Toi Tū Toi Ora will celebrate a vast range of contemporary Māori art from the 1950s to present day, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, clay-making, jewellery, photography, digital media, film and installation art. It will also present a number of new site-specific commissions, including collaborative work from wāhine artist collective Mata Aho, painter Emily Karaka, master weavers Matekino Lawless and Christina Wirihana, and contemporary carver Reweti Arapere. A Toi Tū Toi Ora satellite site is also in works for the Britomart precinct.
Auckland Art Gallery Director Kirsten Paisley says, "This ambitious intergenerational exhibition will be a spectacular celebration of the dynamic and changing expression of contemporary Māori art. Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art is monumental in its storytelling and its scale and speaks to the very core of the Gallery's purpose as a bicultural place for the championing of New Zealand art."
Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art will open at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki on Saturday, 5 December 2020 until May 2021. For more information, visit aucklandartgallery.com.
Image: Robert Jahnke, Ripeka whero from the Te Ripeka series, 2015, cropped.