Whakaahua (Photograph)

Transforming the Photograph into a site for making Māori customary art.

By: Kirsten Lyttle

OPENING THURSDAY 25 JULY 6-8pm

This exhibition is the culmination of my PhD examination. The aim of this project is to use the physical surface of the photograph a site for making customary Māori woven artworks. My project attempts to make digital photographic processes and production allied with indigenous methods of making; not just as a conceptual representation or thematically, but to make the process of digital art making, in itself, indigenous.

Here, digital photography is redeployed as a medium so that Māori weaving is not simply cast as the subject of the colonialist’s camera machinery but is instead rethought and repurposed as an indigenous weaver’s medium.  In this, photography is no longer thought of and deployed as the medium of record, but rethought, repurposed and reworked as an indigenous maker’s medium.

ARTIST TALK: Saturday 3rd August 1 - 2pm