Jonathan Smart Gallery recently presented Kulimoe'anga Stone Maka's exhibition Kumi E Manatu (Finding Black Tapa Memories). Alongside this came an exhibition video showing a conversation between the artist and Jonathan Smart, offering a closer look at the paintings and tapa as well as an insight into Stone's practice.
Click here to view the interview.
The following text is from the exhibition on the Jonathan Smart Gallery website:
Following Maka’s selection for Brook Andrew’s 2020 Sydney Biennale (NIRIN), and tapa in two recent exhibitions at Christchurch Art Gallery/Te Puna O Waiwhetu, (Toga mo Bolata’ane and Te Wheke), this project presents both tapa and new paintings.
The recently completed large black tapa Tufunga Fulutamakia, 2020, ruminates on the future for Pasifika artists, a journey that might build upon the past to navigate ways through an increasingly intense sometimes dark future. The new paintings describe space through dense layers of smoke, brushed in parts to reveal pathways of light – paths sometimes overlain with (actual) spiders’ webs spray-painted mainly in red and blue. There is a delicate and very beautiful cosmology at play here.