Art Talks

Date
3 April 2011, 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Location
Main Gallery, Aratoi

Artists Dame Robin White and Israel Birch talk about the influences of colonisation on their art.

               
Dame Robin White                                                              Israel Birch

Robin White lives in Masterton and her career spans over 40 years. Her father was of Ngati Awa descent and her mother descended from the original pakeha settlers of the Bay of Plenty. Like her parents Robin is a member of the Bahá'í Faith. Robin is a graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts. She has lived in Bottle Creek on the Paremata estuary and on the Otago Peninsula before living and working as an artist and living with the people of Kiribati. In 1999 she moved to Masterton. "I see myself as a recorder of the reality of the situation…what I paint depends on where I am…I don't go around just looking for beautiful hills – my work arises out of the situation I am in".

Israel Tangaroa Birch is from Hastings and belongs to Ngati Kahungunu and Nga Puhi iwi. He holds visual arts’ degrees from the Eastern Institute of Technology and Te Pūtahi-ā-Toi, Massey University. He currently lectures on the BMVA programme at Massey University in Palmerston North. Israel adapts traditional Maori methods and ideas into contemporary art beginning with the sounds of Maori instruments which he translated into carved steel works using many layers of pigment and lacquer to achieve highly polished surfaces.  As a young Maori artist, Israel was a finalist in the Norsewear Art Award in 2004 and 2005 before taking first prize in 2006.


Summer Grass by Robin White