10 Feb 2011
Opening preview: Tuesday 1 March
Exhibition dates: 2 – 19 March 2011
Venue: Artstation, 1 Ponsonby Road, Auckland
Picture this: A darkened gallery.Shutters closed.Lights off.Stand at the doorway and take in the four jewel-like lightworks glowing in front of you.The only light comes from the works themselves, creating an aura, ethereal and luminous, inviting you to enter.
DANSE is a new solo exhibition of lightworks by internationally recognised multi-media artist Niki Hastings-McFall. In this solo exhibition, artist Niki Hastings-McFall addresses themes of faith, resurrection, redemption, reincarnation, life, death, love and loss with her use of pre-loved and out of date materials.
Inspired by the 17th century Flemish Vanitas tradition, the works form a biblical tableau of Adam and Eve, before and after the fall; the Crucifixion; and a work created specifically for this show, a scene from the final book Revelations.
“Symbols, materials and media combine to form a unique visual language in works that reflect upon the fleeting nature of life, the validity of faith and the inevitability of death,” Hastings-McFall says.
The use of light references the divine, a traditional device seen frequently throughout Western European art over many centuries.Hastings-McFall also draws on her own Christian upbringing and mixed Polynesian and English heritage and culture, especially the Samoan concept of the Va as a liminal shifting space that unites separate yet related entities within a shared context. Two of her new works from the ongoing Va series will be exhibited on the wall opposite the lightworks to have Christianity and early Polynesian religious beliefs facing each other across the expanse.
The mortality of our disposable world has long been a part of Hastings-McFall’s work and again she makes use of this, creating the works from recycling or reincarnating materials deemed past their use by date, relegated to the scrap heap or left for dead – albeit her interpretation of the relevance and need to reuse material in today’s consumer society is communicated with wit.
“The nature of the materials means these works constantly move in relation to the viewer’s standpoint,” she says.“The representations of two different cultures will face each other across the space in a contemplative, reflective conversation.”
Additional event: in conjunction with Auckland Art Festival | White Night
Saturday 12 March
Participatory installation
For further information please contact:
Christina Jeffery
Manager, Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust
manager@tautai.org
021 373 402
Niki Hastings-Mcfall
Niki Hastings-McFall (b. 1959) is a prominent multimedia artist of Samoan and English descent. A long term resident of west Auckland she expresses her unique identity by combining the influences of her urban upbringing and Samoan heritage. Since the early 1990s Niki has exhibited extensively in New Zealand and internationally including Australia, New Caledonia, Hawaii, London and New York. Major group exhibitions include Pasifika Styles (2006-2008) at the University of Cambridge Museum, UK, Samoa Contemporary (2008) Pataka Museum, Porirua, Le Folauga (2007), Auckland Museum, Latitudes, Hotel de Ville, Paris, France and Paradise Now (2004), Asia Art Society Museum, New York.
Image:
Title: Narcissus, 2009
Photo credit - Clint Cardozo
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