I am a Samoan visual artisted based in South Auckland New Zealand. I work in the mediums of Photography, Moving-Image and Film. My art practice is concerned with issues representation around contemporary Pacific experiences. It examines facets of my own cultural heritage and looks at aspects of Identity, gender, sexuality and popular culture amongst Pacific communities.
This Blog is an online record of my creative journey with the arts, my people and life in New Zealand.
You are warmly invited to the exhibition opening of
The Last Interpreters
Friday 23 March, 6pm 2012
As the impact of globalism becomes part of the everyday and our countries demographic continues to change and develop, it is the unique perspectives of the artists in this exhibition that reflect a particular awareness and experience of living in New Zealand. Featuring works by Edith Amituanai, Carolin Casey, Tanu Gago and Sanjay Theodore this exhibition presents their diverse interpretations as they negotiate an increasingly complex cultural landscape.
The exhibition involves using the body as both subject and object. Artists address this theme through live performances, moving image, installation and photography. "The exhibition presents a fluid vision of identity, one that is not fixed in the false dualism of minority and majority," says curator Angela Tiatia. The exhibition includes works by Darcelle Apelu, Tanu Gago, Ahilapalapa Rands, Nastashia Simeona, Kalisolaite 'Uhila and Vaimaila Urale.
Join the artists on Saturday 25 February from 1pm to 2pm as they discuss their works and then stay for live art performances between 2pm and 4pm. This exhibition is proudly supported by Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust during the Pasifika Festival 2012 season.
Angela Tiatia talks about the exhibition 'Anatomy of Paradise' for Polly Fresh TV.
This is an art work made from footage shot out of a moving car in Samoa. The clips are from a road trip to SAMOANA resort in samoa taken in october of 2011 while on holiday with my beautiful mates Will and Jess. This video is dedicated to them for their awesomeness.
Avanoa O Tama is a photographic series that looks at the cultural assignment of gender identity in regard to social and cultural expectation amongst men of Pacific diaspora. Concerned with representation and codes of gender this work explores a spectrum of masculine identity among literal and conceptual cultural spaces. The conceptual spaces refer to the intangible grey areas where gender and sexuality tread an ambiguous line between the typical and the unexpected.
These spaces are often occupied by Fa'afafine and gay Pacific males. In this instance, this space is shared with other heterosexual Polynesian and Melanesian males. As an artist I am interested to see what is exposed about our public perceptions of gender and sexuality when these codes of gender deviate from cultural and social norms. And how this reflects on our own cultural sensibilities and notions of tolerance and understanding.
A new work by Tanu Gago for the group exhibition, "Mana Takatapui: Taera Tane" curated by Reuben Friend for City Gallery Wellington (January - March 2011).
MANATAKAPUI TAERA TANE | JERRY THE FA'AFAFINE |
Artist Statement
JERRY THE FA’AFAFINE 2011
Tanu Gago
This work is concerned with the construction of masculine identities among young urban Pacific gay males, exploring notions of visibility, character play, performance, sexuality and gender stereotype.
I’m interested in what happens to the gay Samoan males excluded from the cultural understanding and security of being identified as a Fa'afafine. Are they to remain invisible and continue to manage alternative lives and identities?
The reality is yes. The reality is JERRY THE FA'AFAFINE; a type of urban Pacific gay male, conditioned both culturally and socio-politically to the gender default of western heterosexual norms. While he accepts and conforms to this state of being it contradicts with his desires. From out of which emerges a new identity, a character that is often hyper masculine and overtly sexual, liberating him from his reality and thrusting him into a world of fantasy, fun, and even if only momentary... freedom.
Image 1/4 'IONA' Jerry the Fa'afafine 2010, A1 crystal matte archival. Image 2/4 'DANIEL' Jerry the Fa'afafine 2010, A1 crystal matte archival. Image 3/4 'LEO' Jerry the Fa'afafine 2010, A1 crystal matte archival.
Image 4/4 'TANU' Jerry the Fa'afafine 2010, A1 crystal matte archival.
Mana Takatāpui: Taera Tāne
Curated by Reuben Friend.
Deane Gallery / City Gallery Wellington
January - March 2011
Featuring: Fear Brampton, Tanu Gago, Richard Kereopa, Dan Taulapapa McMullin and Hoteera Riri.
An evening showcasing Pacific stories, talent and wannabe Peter Jacksons, Square Eyes features video works by recent graduates and current students of Manukau Institute of Technology.
Organiser Leilani Kake says, "when I was young my mum used to say 'You'll get square eyes watching too much TV'... come and watch as much as you want and enjoy a night of fresh film, video art and popcorn."
Highlights of Square Eyes include South Auckland film maker Tanu Gago's You Love My Fresh and Samoa-based film maker Dionne Fonoti's Young, Gifted and Samoan.
Square Eyes is presented by Leilani Kake for the Faculty of Creative Arts, Manukau Institute of Technology.
6PM Z BLOCK 04/06/11
For more information, contact Fresh Gallery Otara. Email: Nicole.Lim@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz or phone 09 271 6019.
These images are of a Samoan youth group from Otara South Auckland engaged in the customary practice of preparing a Samoan UMU (ground oven). Urbanization may be a geographical status but this seems more like Samoa has come to Otara and is thriving beyond industry and state housing. Culture is nurtured as a means of contrast to poor education, high crime statistics and low incomes. These images look and feel like they could originate from anywhere in the Pacific. They show and in some cases define "Community". I felt privileged to have been a participant and grew from being able to access rich experiences that inform my own Samoan + Cultural + Identity. The video footage from this day formed the bases for the documentary component of YOU LOVE MY FRESH 2010.
Tanu Gago is a Samoan film-maker who here presents a moving image installation of three screens butted together, part of a joint venture between Te Tuhi and Fresh Gallery Otara. The work is a celebration of South Auckland Samoan music and dance - and indirectly food - mixed with a gritty confrontational rhetoric. It’s very political; very polished; very slick. Yet unexpectedly complex as well.
Using the wide screen there are three parts. The first - in black and white - directs a message to mainstream white culture, using yellow block lettering and a graphic tone and rhetorical voice similar to Barbara Kruger.
One section says: I feel redundant of your First World. In your mind we are all blacks. You want my Fresh. You want my labour. The title refers to ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ as a source of cheap manual labour, but also the Exotic Other, a cultural novelty.
The second part (also in black and white) features Samoans working on building construction sites and then preparing food as a community for a feast, with God Defend New Zealand playing in the background. It is a contrast to the distorted perceptions being attacked in the first part, where now family and wider group activities are being shown as a reply. Obviously the soundtrack is intended to be ironic, because of what preceded it, yet not necessarily so. There is an ambivalence, an affection for Aotearoa. The music is lyrically beguiling and draws you to the film from elsewhere in the building
With the third section (in colour) we see a male and female performer dancing in traditional costume on the three screens. (I wondered if the woman was a fa’afafine, as that would complicate the interpretation.) The music is frenetically percussive in mood. Whereas the sound at the beginning was soothing and drifting in contradistinction to the mood of the language, now towards the end it crackles in a snappy, penetrating staccato of loudly beaten drums
However the first section of this film is the most interesting part, and the last too similar to a tourism documentary, a recording that is commercial in feel. The glowering anger at the beginning is refreshing with its elegant graphics, moving letters, manoeuvring syntax and stinging phrases. Yet for all that, it’s probably wasted in an art gallery.
Well maybe ‘wasted’ is too strong - for the Pakuranga audience is surely appreciative - but Gago’s subtly complex project needs to be in public cinemas or on the sides of downtown buildings where it can generate more impact. Where despite its use of aural seduction it can shock and genuinely offend. Where the audience will find it hard to take it in its stride. Where ‘edge’ is genuinely disturbing and not glib marketing - and where the social issues it raises are analysed and talked about in a lively but serious fashion.
The Sole Project: The Exhibition is the culmination of a youth visual arts project delivered by the Nga Rangatahi Toa Creative Arts Initiative of still water rising Trust.
Created to provide transformational life experiences for at-risk youth, the project gives rangatahi (youth) the chance to work with artist-mentors to develop their creative voice and understanding of art as cultural and personal expression.
Sixteen collaborative works produced in the youth-artist partnerships will be exhibited along with a selection of works by the mentors.
I got the opportunity to collaborate with a young man named Timani Ngungutao form Mangere for a one week one on one mentoring program that saw a South Auckland youth partnered with an artist to create an art work.
Timani's passion for HIPHOP music became the focus as our project titled 'BATTLE STYLE FREE' was a moving image animation of still photographs Timani produced over the week, edited to the an original recording of his own hiphop lyrics to a beat donated my the Otara Music and Arts Centre (OMAC)
These are some of the pictures from the studio recording.
Rocked up into Otara with a bundle of YOU LOVE MY FRESH stickers and a Canon camera. Matafaga is a Pacific night club based out these ways. MF for short, it's always off the chain on a Thursday night, so seem a great idea to take some custom FRESH to Freshest spot in town. Islanders go crazy for free shit. Handed out the stickers to punters and they lost their minds... I call it a photo shoot, but really, it's just Samoan's acting a fool!!
This is from the official MatafagaBEBOpage. Just to give you some context. Makes me laugh...
"We are a nightclub in South Auckland that strives on giving you an experience that you will never forget. With our friendly staff and our awsome band you will be rocking the night away. You will hear latest RnB & Hip Hop tunes from our DJ's and the latest sounds from the Pacific Islands.
So whatever you may be celebrating this weekend, whether it's a Thursday, Friday or Saturday...come up and we will help give you an experience you will never experience anywhere else."
