Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, 2021
In 2020, Michel Tuffery collaborated with Dr Karlo Mila to create the narrated and animated video Mana Moana 2020 Meditation playing on our east wall. This exhibition emerges from this co-creation, and from origins as ancient as the great sea of Kiwa.
Seven new works share stories of unfurling life and ongoing whakapapa, the unbreakable connections of past-present-future and ocean-land-sky. Prompted by stills from the meditation, each work has been hand-drawn, extended and reinvigorated at extraordinary resolution. Compulsory Covid-19 lockdowns gave time and pause for Tuffery to harness new creative and printing technologies. Details emerge from the blackest of black inks as though luminescent. The distinction between 2-d and 3-d cannot hold; these works pulsate, twinkle and spin.
Reaching out from the fertile darkness of the realm of potential being, here is our
ever-turning world.
Michel Tuffery warmly acknowledgements Dr Karlo Mila and the Mana Moana Cutarorial Aiga;
Rachel Rakena, Michael Bridgman, Storybox, Manase Lua, Laughton Kura, Dr Billie Lythberg and CNZ.
