We are excited to be presenting new work from artists Ngataiharuru Taepa, Emily Wolfe, and Hannah Valentine for Aotearoa Art Fair. Contact us via email to register your interest or purchase your ticket here and find us at Booth B11.
Ngataiharuru Taepa (b.1976 Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Te Arawa, Te Āti Awa) lives and works in Palmerston North where he is Kaihautu Toi Māori - Director of Māori Arts at Massey University College of Creative Arts.
Raised in an artistic family, Taepa’s earliest influence was his grandmother, painter Mavis Newland, and his father Wi Taepa, who is a carver and Māori clay worker. Taepa’s interests in Māori arts accelerated while attending Te Aute College in Hawkes Bay, where he observed the making of kōwhaiwhai panels for Te Whare o Rangi by art teacher Mark Dashper. Studying at Massey University with lecturers Robert Jahnke, Kura Te Waru Rewiri and Shane Cotton, Taepa completed his Bachelor of Māori Visual Arts in 2000, and his Masters in Māori Visual Arts in 2003.
In 2000 Taepa was elected to Te Atinga, the Visual Arts Committee within Toi Māori Aotearoa where he was mentored by the likes of Sandy Adsett, June Grant, Manos Nathan and Coleen Urlich. Taepa’s involvement with different Toi Māori hui has created experiences of interaction with many artists from Aotearoa and cultures throughout the Pacific. He sees these interactions as an important part of his creative practice. Fuelled by a long-standing fascination with kōwhaiwhai, his distinct works reimagine traditional wood carving through contemporary methods and materials.
Another word for kōwhaiwhai is tuhituhi, which is the māori word we now use for writing. Kōwhaiwhai was the writing of our ancestors. That's the way they decided to describe what they saw in the world through the written language of tuhituhi or kōwhaiwhai. I'm quite conscious that this art form pre-dates, in our culture, the written word and part of my master’s study was to examine the impact that the written word had on our visual culture and on understanding kōwhaiwhai as a visual language. - Ngataiharuru Taepa, 2022
Taepa has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, with his work represented in significant collections including Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, and Auckland War Memorial Museum.
Emily Wolfe (b.1972 Tāmaki Makaurau) lives and works in Oxford, UK. Wolfe moved to London over twenty years ago when she was awarded the Ryoichi Sasakawa Scholarship to study for a Master’s in Fine Arts at the prestigious Slade School of Fine Arts at University College London. Since then, Wolfe has managed to sustain an international arts practice with regular exhibitions both in Aotearoa and the UK.
Wolfe immerses herself in the traditions and reveries of trompe l’oeil and its charismatic illusory qualities. A collector of antiquities and curiosities, Wolfe sets obscure and often broken objects and materials against backdrops of old master styled landscape paintings, which themselves have the appearance of having been salvaged from the dusty interiors of second-hand stores or boxes destined for garage sales.
Wolfe’s paintings are permeated by an emotional charge and a lingering wistful narrative. The artist has a preoccupation with objects that are redundant, discarded, and overlooked, or which are visibly worn and tattered, carrying the physical marks of their age and history. The artist has a tendency towards the tactile details of material; lace curtains, creased tablecloths, post-it notes stuck to glassy windowpanes. Folded sheets of paper in shades of pink, cream and white are tacked over the landscapes with strips of yellowing tape, their edges charmingly uneven or curling upward as if we could reach out and peel them off the surface.
These paintings begin with paper collages. The raw material for them comes from photocopies of prints of 18th century landscape paintings, from coloured paper, cellophane, cardboard, or any other scraps of paper or detritus I might find in my studio. The paintings refer to the process of recording archaeological excavations, something I became interested in after a period spent working on a variety of sites with the Museum of London Archaeology. The two processes of painting and excavating are connected in my mind. Each process involves layering and stratification and the consequent emergence of narratives. - Emily Wolfe, 2022
Hannah Valentine (b. 1989 Tāmaki Makaurau) lives and works across Tāmaki Makaurau and Tauranga. Valentine's practice is pervaded by the artist's interest in the body and its physical sensibilities, emphasising the importance of touch in our experience of interacting with the world and each other. With her wide-ranging practice taking form primarily in object and installation, Valentine’s work is permeated by the human body and its various appendages and gestures.
The artist brings together hand-moulded bronze aspects with sourced materials including utilitarian climbing rope, the simplicity and precision of her careful compositions resulting in a tactile tension.
I really like the way bronze is able to pick up and hold imprints of the body. Similar to working with clay, but there is something about its permanence I’m drawn to. In a culture where so much is thrown away, I like that working with bronze is so solid, so present and lasting. I love those areas on public sculptures that you can see thousands of hands have rubbed. It’s a material that people tend to understand, too, though usually from the perspective of monuments, rather than objects on a personal scale. I like that it responds to touch. It warms up, it likes to be held. Viewers can fill the space around [the sculptures], but for all that the freestanding works are made of bronze, they are still fragile. They are thin, light, and a touch sends them into a quiver. - Hannah Valentine, 2022
Valentine has received several residencies and awards, most recently selected as the Supreme Award Winner of the Miles Art Awards 2022, and her work is held in private and public collections. She was a member of the RM Collective (2018 - 2021) and co-directed the artist-run space LOFT Jervois (2014-2015).
