10am Sunday 12th February

Tauranga Art Gallery warmly invites you to join current exhibiting artist Maraea Timutimu as she takes us on a guided walk from her exhibition He kāwai whenua He kāwai whakapapa to Matapihi. The purpose of the walk is to return some of the whenua used in Maraea's exhibition to the place from which it came. The walk will be the concluding celebration of Maraea's  He kāwai whenua He kāwai whakapapa exhibition. To celebrate the closing of the exhibition drinks and nibbles will be provided at the gallery after the walk.

We will meet at Tauranga Art Gallery at 10am, please bring a water bottle, sunblock, hat and suitable footwear for the walk.

More about the exhibition:

Maraea Timutimu: He kāwai whenua He kāwai whakapapa

He kāwai whenua He kāwai whakapapa addresses the centrality of whenua within mātauranga Māori and the ways it can connect us to our stories, histories, identities and whakapapa. Timutimu presents a suite of large-scale colour photographs that are a play on portraiture; stones and rocks are collected from the waterways of her maternal and paternal kāinga at Matapihi, Tauranga Moana, and Rūātoki, Eastern Bay of Plenty. They are composed into totemic forms that poetically stand in for people and places that are important to the artist.

These photographic portraits provide a unique insight into the connectedness of whenua and whakapapa through a Māori lens. “When we view whenua in its natural state, we see that it is made up of layers. These layers all have a whakapapa, derived from the natural pigments of Papatūānuku (mother earth) connecting it to place and time. It depicts us and the makeup of our individual genealogy” says Timutimu.
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