Transcript
Pacific people are among fifteen artists exhibiting at Women's Work, including Sulieta Fieme'a Burrows, Juliana Browneyes-Clifford, Emily Mafile'o, Karlo Mila, Lisa Taouma and Tui Emma Gillies.
The show challenges old and new stereotypes around the work women do, considering how they can be celebrated, hidden or illuminated.
Co-curator Billie Lythberg says it's an opportunity for people to respond to traditional views of the tasks of women.
"Because so often these gendered ideas of work have been imposed I think by art historians, by anthropologists, by sociologists. We theorise, we write and then things seem to be set. Whereas within communities, especially with artists, things are so much more fluid so it is something we have talked about for a long time. And the possibility of having a show at Geoff Wilson gave us the chance to really crystalise that."
Co-curator and lead artist, Tui Emma Gillies, has contributed a tapa cloth piece constructed around the Tongan word for women, fēfine.
Her first piece has a woman breastfeeding with an umbilical cord around her neck that goes down to her heart and is painted onto tapa.
"There is a baby in there and she's trying to look the part and she's trying to [look at] what the expectations of a mother are today is to just be able to continue to look good and also be able to raise children, sort of like superwoman. So I wanted to portray that in a piece of art."
Tui Gillies says she included her Tongan mother Sulieti Burrow's work as she produced a traditional flower piece for the show.
"She's one of those traditional artists who is an old master of what she does and it was an opportunity to showcase a woman, a very strong woman, whose like I said, traditional. So it is good to put her in the show as you need more of these elder people in the shows cos these are the ones who we all pull our strength from and we get our ideas from."
Male Maori artist Jimmy James Kouratoras says he was glad to contribute a painting of a madonna type image that is like a mother figure looking out for us in the afterlife.
"It was a challenge in one way - but on the other hand an opportunity to strip away that masculine kind of hard edge kind of stake my territory to be like no, I actually have an understanding of what a women's work is from a mother's perspective to raise kids and on the other hand to have a child and so I put myself in the middle there."
The exhibition is on at the Northtec Geoff Wilson Gallery until June 9.
