Ka iri ko te whakaaturanga hou a Jade Townsend (Te Ati Haunui A Pāpārangi) ki Te Whare O Rehua Sarjeant Gallery, i Whanganui.
Kātahi anō a Townsend ka hoki mai ki Whanganui mai i tāwāhi, ki te hanga i tēnei whakaaturanga, ka tū mō te rima marama ki te wahanga Māori o te whare whakaaturanga.
Hei tā Townsend, “This is the most important audience to ever engage with my practice. I’ve shown in London and America and China, you know, all around the world. But it’s home people this time and it’s a show that’s been made specifically for people who are from here or live here.”
He whakaaturanga tēnei ka kōrero ki te mana wāhine Māori, mā te tīni i te tae o ngā pakitara hei kōpū, hei whare tangata.
“So my focus was making the work fit the space. So it is a site specific show. Because it has this amazing, it’s like a controlled space. So we can do what we want with the lighting, with the sound, with the walls. It made sense to think of it like a whare tangata, like an initial house of learning or a womb space. And it has a kind of divinely feminine space as well”, hei tā Townsend anō.
Kua mahi ngātahi rāua ko Cecelia Kumeroa (Te Āti Haunui A Paparangi), Ringatoi Māori Matua o te whare whakaaturanga, ki te hanga i tēnei taonga hei kai mā ngā whatu o ngā uri o te awa tupua o Whanganui.
Hei tā Kumeroa, “It’s a divergent way of making art, so we can bring in multiple narratives and different sides of her whakapapa, which I think is exciting and its really important for our people to see that there’s multiple ways our artists express themselves and they can too, especially our rangatahi.”