Various Artists with Beth & Sofia

Toi Te Mana: an Indigenous History of Māori Art is a landmark account in words and pictures of Māori art by Māori art historians Professor Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) and Associate Professor Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou), with the late Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī). 

Published last month, the authors explore a wide field of art practice from the arrival of Pacific voyagers 800 years ago to contemporary artists in Aotearoa and around the world today. 

Sofia had a kōrero with co-author Deidre Brown about Toi Te Mana, its content, and the significance of the book.

For Stage Direction this week, Alice Canton is in to chat with George Fowler (Hugo Grrrl) about new and upcoming work of his, including the Auckland Pun Battle Championship and Naughty!: A Christmas Drag Extravaganza. 

Pushing Parallels is a new group exhibition on at the Arts House Trust, Pah Homestead. Showcasing a diverse range of multidisciplinary artists from across Aotearoa, the exhibition features works from The Arts House Trust collection alongside invited artists who, although formally trained in one discipline, have ventured into new artistic territories. 

Pushing Parallels encourages the artists to experiment, pushing the limits of their mediums to create a playground of colour and form to re-learn and question traditional art practices. Each room within the exhibition serves as a chapter, distinctively coloured and themed, yet interconnected through relationships between material, process, and scale. 

Sofia spoke to the co-curators of Pushing Parallels, Abbie La Rooy, Kiki Hall, and Michael Prosee about the exhibition and the curation process.

In 2023, artists Charlie Thomas, Rose Lasham, Peregrin Hyde and Tegan Allpress travelled to South Georgia, an island in the Atlantic Ocean.

I had a kōrero with two of the artists who embarked on the expedition: Peregrin Hyde and Tegan Allpress. They created art there – or upon their return – based on their interpretations of the remote island. This art will be part of the exhibition Into Ocean & Ice, opening next week at the New Zealand Maritime Museum.

Hyde is a multidisciplinary artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. His practice, which combines art and science, responds to the alarming rates of Antarctic ice melt, which reached historic lows in 2023. Tegan Allpress (Ngāti Whakaue, Rongowhakaata) is a film photographer focused on the concept of tūrangawaewae.

Into Ocean & Ice opens at the New Zealand Maritime Museum on November 29th.