Wellingtonians are invited to immerse themselves in the large scale, vibrant world of street art with Toi Pōneke’s upcoming exhibition Here & Out.

Featuring nine internationally recognised female street artists at the top of the global game, Here & Out will run from 26 March to 22 April, and showcase their incredible creative talents, inspired by the artists’ COVID-19 experiences.

Here & Out reimagines street art, combining it with digital creations to provide a new visual experience that will enrich our visual, public arts scene. It makes international art accessible in public spaces at a time when we cannot travel.

Here & Out will inspire audiences with exposure to top Aotearoa and international female artists, through a series of talks, workshops, an art show and public performances.

The programme includes live mural painting and a digital mural display, a vibrant exhibition (replicated online), and a waterfront walk of larger-than-life puppets The Andean Cat (5m) and the Big Girls, supported by the Latin group Ollin Yoliztli dancers and musicians.

Street art has grown exponentially thanks to the many exceptional murals painted world-wide, festivals, and photographic and video documentation, as well as rapid online sharing. Subsequently, a huge physical-digital contemporary art movement across the globe is constantly and rapidly expanding.

For street artists the confinement of lockdowns has resulted in work based on negation of the experience ‘of the outside’, bringing instead a desire to reconnect with the community, and new ways of understanding what is public.

Here & Out is a strongly collaborative mini-festival, facilitating long term connections between our nine participating female street artists, and the local and international arts communities.

Here & Out features:

• Caratoes (Belgium) explores ancient cultures navigating the encounter with inner darkness as a way to heal and rebirth; painting/sculpting off the demons and performing with them.
• Dreamgirls Collective - Gina Kiel, Xoe Hall, and Miriama Grace-Smith (Aotearoa) are a Wellington-based female street art crew that has a characteristic vibrant, feminine, Māori influenced, and psychedelic aesthetic.
• Fluro (Christchurch, Aotearoa), brings her urban lettering style inspired by graffiti, signwriting, and typography.
• Gleo (Colombia) painted the biggest acrylic mural in the world (Wichita, United States, 2018). She moves around the colour spectrum finding the light in human nature with her massive murals which can be found globally.
• Meki (Peru) is a renowned graffiti writer/muralist active since the early 2000s, painting on walls, sculpting, and creating big-scale artifacts that take a stand against pollution, cruelty, and boredom. She is responsible for the five-metre-high Andean Cat (the most threatened felid in the Americas), which will walk along the Wellington waterfront alongside the amazing Big Girls, and the Ollin Yoliztli dancers and musicians.
• Paula Tikay (Chile) works to highlight the Latin-American identity through indigenous characters protecting their territories.
• Janine Williams (Aotearoa) is a member of The Most Dedicated Crew graffiti/Street art/Post-Graffiti crew that started painting on the streets of West Auckland in the early nineties.

“I feel that this exhibition brings a much needed and refreshing connection between local street artists and viewers here in Aotearoa, and international street artists who are at the top of their game from South America, and Europe,” says Gina Kiel – Dreamgirls Collective, street artist.

“To add another level of awesome to this, it is really inspiring to be part of an all-female street artist line-up for this project who all bring so much strength and incredible creative talent and soulful expression in what is still a heavily male dominated industry.”

Here & Out is presented by Mango Collective, curated by Mirella Moschella and brought to Wellington with support from the Public Art Fund, Creative Communities, Art on Walls (Wellington City Council) and Resene, New World Newtown, Garage Project and Mira_a_Mire. With thanks also to Boosted donators and the Latin community.

The Here & Out programme will be run under strict Government CPF Red guidelines.

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