Event Details
Nau mai haere mai to a floor talk with exhibiting artists Miria Pohatu (Ngāti Porou, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Kahungunu) and Leanne Morrison, exploring their newly commissioned works presented in Gwen Malden Te Matau-a-Māui Art Commissions.
Miria Pohatu (Ngāti Porou, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a painter who lives and teaches in Te Matau-a-Māui but was born and raised in Ruatorea, Te Tairāwhiti. Her work blends customary form with texture to create an abstract expression of her ancestral land, and encourages rangatahi to explore the cultural systems within Te Ao Māori. She has studied at Toihoukura in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa Gisborne and the Eastern Institute of Technology in Ahuriri Napier. Her work has been part of group exhibitions in Te Matau-a-Māui and further afield, including the XIV Florence Biennale as part of Tāhū Collective, a rōpū of Māori artists from the North Island’s East Coast.
Leanne Morrison is an artist of Samoan and Pākehā descent. Her paintings examine themes of relational spaces within a modernist form. While traditionally using a spray gun and air compressor on canvas, she has become interested in extending her painting off the canvas and into architectural space. Her work has been presented in galleries throughout Aotearoa, while her practice is informed by studies at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Ahuriri Napier and Whitecliffe in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.