Influx

23 September - 28 October 2016
St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland

20 May - 13 August 2017
Pataka Art Museum, Wellington

Rhueben Meredith and Pelepesite Tofilau, Nina Oberg Humphries, Christina Pataialii, Valasi Leota-Seiuli, Pati Solomona Tyrell, Jasmine Te Hira, Jasmine Togo-Brisby, Louisa Afoa, Shane Tu’ihalangingie and John Vea
 

The term influx suggests abundance and a movement propelled by continuous change. This is taken as a fluid concept that reflects the ebb and flow of recent tertiary art practice. Since Paul Tangata, the first artist of Pacific heritage to graduate from Elam School of Fine Arts in 1965, there has been an influx of Pacific students training across art institutions. While the range of artworks in this exhibition coalesce from a particular environment of art making, the artists included are not defined by one set of politics or artistic method, but instead work with an awareness of their context—political, social, ecological—that is in a constant state of flux. Pools of knowledge engaged through tertiary education feed back into their artistic practices and continue a vast churning movement. Influx brings together a diverse range of artworks by eleven artists that locates tertiary practice as a time where many artists develop a sense of political agency. Collectively these artists push and pull our understandings of the Pacific with a scope that is much wider than New Zealand.

Reviews
John Hurrell, Tautai Milestone, Eyecontact.