For Ngāti Kahungunu and Kai Tahu descendent Ayesha Green, being an artist has become an essential service she can provide for her whakapapa (ancestors). Based in Auckland, New Zealand, Ayesha’s cartoonesque painting practice seeks to engage with processes of reproduction and representation through the lens of cultural value systems. Yet for Ayesha, there is one main question that drives her work: what makes Māori art Māori art? She has made waves in the New Zealand art scene by disrupting Eurocentric systems of hierarchy and its associated cultural framework. She captures large complex histories, while also being incredibly personal.”
www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-
Bangarra’s Terrain is a
breathtaking exploration of Australia’s largest salt lake-Kati Thanda. Choreographed
by Frances Rings. The nine-part
performance evokes the power of body and land converging to bring spirit to
place. “Stand
with us and feel the ancestral ties that bind people to Country: a rich
cultural spine stretching through the generations. Watch the waters rise and fall
as we reconnect with the energy of land and the resilient spirit of the people
who care for its future”. An experience of stunning cultural meaning and
authentic BEAUTY by the talented Bangara team. www.bangarra.com.au
Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island is the artist’s first major exhibition to be held in an Australian public institution. Featuring more than 80 works from across his nearly two-decade career, the exhibition unpacks the ways in which Boyd holds a lens to colonial history, explores multiplicity within narratives and interrogates blackness as a form of First Nations’ resistance.Working with an idiosyncratic painting technique that partially obscures the composition, Boyd refigures archival imagery, art historical references and his own family photographs, asking us to contend with histories that have been hidden from view. www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/daniel-boyd/
Lynn Wood
Sabra Brock
Gillian Corban
Madeline Cunningham