26Jan

31Mar

OLOA ORA | John Pule, Fatu Feu’u

“OLOA ORA”

TREASURE LIFE

Pacific Island Art, Artifacts, and Ceramics from the Barry Brickell Collection and Others

The title of the exhibition is a combination of two words from two different but closely related cultures; both are from the same Polynesian group of languages: one language being Samoan, Oloa meaning Treasure, and the other Maori, Ora meaning Life.

The key intent of the exhibition is to erase the barriers that are so often drawn between Maori and other Pacific Island art, culture and identities.

The exhibition is drawn primarily from the large public/private collection of Coromandel’s unique and much loved identity Barry Brickell.

OLOA ORA brings together approximately 100 diverse art works.  It is primarily an assemblage of paintings, photographs, prints and artifacts including, tapa cloth, fine mats and Fijian pottery all mixed in with contemporary art and ceramics from Barry Brickell’s extensive collection and other material drawn in from selected private collections and other artists.

In OLOA ORA we encounter some cultural juxtaposition with work by Buck Nin sitting comfortably with Samoan tapa cloth, and a Ralph Hotere painting, with pottery from Vanuatu.

Some of the key artists represented in this exhibition include:

John Bevan-Ford, Barry Brickell, Shane Cotton, Fatu Feu’u, Tony Fomison, Fred Graham, Amorangi Hikuroa, Manos Nathan, John Pule, Bay Riddell, Yvonne Rust, Colleen Waiata-Urlich (Just to mention a few).

The Pacific Ocean is like a giant jigsaw puzzle that covers about one third of the globe.   We here in Aotearoa, New Zealand, are like a couple of pieces of that jigsaw that sits snuggly in to complete the whole.  We should not be in a state of denial with a “them and us” mentality.  We are just beginning to learn to celebrate the fact that we are an integral part of the Pacific (Oceania).

With those old cultural and mental barriers broken down, OLOA ORA reinforces the notion that although we are many we sail in the one canoe  (waka) here in Oceania.

John Perry

Curator

January 2016

DRIVING CREEK
ART GALLERY

Opening Tuesday 26th January

Opening hours: 11am to 16.30pm

Closed Monday’s