Te Hauka te ahi
Allison Beck
Caitlin Rose Donnelly
As adoptees we miss opportunities to know our whānau. Te hauka te ahi, meaning 'the stranger who stays
longer gets to know the host better' is pertinent for us.
This exhibition explores some of the whakaaro around finding your whakapapa and
connecting with whānau and whenua. We are celebrating who we are, proudly saying we are Māori.
Opening
Friday March 15
5PM
Please join us for the opening
Allison Beck
The works in this exhibition are made with found and gifted materials. This
kaupapa comes from a humble background and a joy found in reusing objects. The works are based
on a feeling of disconnection and the search for a unifying language.
They access emotions around being adopted and reach across
generations to korero with her dead.
Allison Beck (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha, Pākehā) is based in Ōtepoti.
She won the excellence in printmaking award at the 2023
Cleveland Awards and recently joined the Paemanu collective.
www.paemanu.co.nz/about
Caitlin Rose Donnelly
'Buy MY grass' is a series of works made from grass and uku pigments from
the whenua which the artist lives. There is irony in the title as the artist has taken
grass grown on a farm in pākeha ownserhsip to sell. The poem that is spread across
the works concerns her placement amid these worlds, past, present, Māori and Pākeha.
Caitlin Rose Donnelly (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Pākehā) is a multidisciplinary
artist based in rural Southland. Her practice analyses being Māori, an adoptee, a
mother, and a woman in traditionally male spaces.
The whakataukī Ka mua, ka muri, meaning we must look to the past to
inform the future, centres her whakaaro and mahi toi.
She works for Paemanu Ngāi Tahu Contemporary Visual Arts Charitable Trust,
holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Dunedin School of Art and has written
for Scope, ArtNow and Vernacular.
Exhibitions include Paemanu: Tauraka Toi—A Landing Place at the Dunedin Public
Art Gallery, Kia Ora Whaea at Toi Moroki: CoCA (Centre of Contemporary Art),
Whenua at Refinery Artspace as part of Nelson Jewellery Week
and Horoi, Paper presented at 2023 CTANZ symposium.
Allison Beck, Taka te kapa. pencil and acrylic on newspaper, 2024
Caitlin Rose Donnelly, Tahi, (from series Buy MY grass), karaihe and uku pigment, 2024.
