Exciting Contemporary Art at City Gallery
City Gallery Wellington is pleased to present 2 x 2 Contemporary Projects, a series of two exhibitions, each showcasing
two contemporary artists’ solo exhibitions. Fresh and innovative, these artworks and artists are at the forefront of
contemporary practices.
While these are four distinct exhibitions, each with their own sets of agendas and concerns, they have been carefully
selected by curator Emma Bugden to generate dialogue. Individually they explore a diverse range of issues from the
impact of colonisation on Maori to the never-ending resonance of a heritage in a distant land. Together they create a
conversation about the complexity of personal and cultural identity in today’s urban and global environment.
“What I want to show is an intimate and particular view,” says Edith Amituanai. In Mrs Amituanai, Amituanai (nee
Sagapolu) photographs her extended family and friends to explore the relationship between personal and communal rituals
and the way traditions change across time and geography. The exhibition features a series of photographs of New Zealand
Samoan weddings, including her own wedding where she became Mrs Amituanai. Significantly she is one of twenty
photographers selected for inclusion in the recent major publication Contemporary New Zealand Photography.
In Back to Mine: Urban Realities, we see Kelcy Taratoa standing in an urban environment dotted with references to the
New Zealand urban landscape immediately familiar to all New Zealanders— a 4 Square, street signs, state houses. Entering
this world are superheroes—
Spiderman, Batman, the Hulk and the Silver Surfer. The paintings, with their rich collision of iconic images, construct
a complex topography which charts the impact of colonisation and globalisation on local cultures. There are no
explicitly Maori images in the paintings apart from Taratoa; that absence speaks to many urban Maori raised away from
their iwi, language and culture.
Lonnie Hutchinson and Sriwhana Spong feature in the second season. The blackness in Lonnie Hutchinson’s Parallel
Seductions seduces as the colour of power and potential. Hutchinson, of Ngai Tahu and Samoan descent, has been
exhibiting regularly in New Zealand and internationally since the late 1990s. In a flowing confident brushstroke,
Hutchinson paints intimate large-scale drawings of women directly onto City Gallery’s walls. Hutchinson’s distinctive
brand of iconography, loosely drawn from traditional Maori and Samoan forms, suggest a symbolic protection. The work is
sensual, seductive and politically charged.
In 2005 video and installation artist Sriwhana Spong won the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award. Hailed by
The Herald for her “great powers of invention…”, Spong addresses and explores links between physical and spiritual
worlds, the known and the unknown and the differing cultural attitudes of east and west toward these states. Spong’s
video and sculptural installation Twin Oak Drive places her own Balinese heritage alongside other areas of exotic and
uncertain terrain—from space travel to horror movies, a Lynchian world where all is not as it seems.
City Gallery Wellington Director Paula Savage says: “It is a privilege to bring this exciting body of work to
Wellington. As always, we are extremely grateful to Telecom, for joining with us once again in presenting leading
contemporary New Zealand art to Wellington.”
Edith Amituanai/Kelcy Taratoa, 18 June– 30 July 2006
Lonnie Hutchinson/Sriwhana Spong, 5 August – 24 September 2006
2 x 2 Contemporary Projects
City Gallery Wellington
Free Entry
Principal Sponsor: Telecom
Ends