Media Release
3 May 2007

Photography a Family Affair for Three Samoan Artists

How to Tread Lightly and Live Like a Shadow is a new exhibition by photographer Greg Semu, showing in collaboration with his cousins Eimi Tamua and Evotia Tamua Thompson.

The three Samoan photographers work in a contemporary medium, photographing their communities and recording their Pacific heritage. The images chosen for the exhibition opening this week at Manukau City Council’s Mangere Arts Centre come from around the Auckland region with many of them shot in Manukau.

Greg will showcase work from throughout his artistic career including commercial and non-commercial work. “These images are like a scrap book, a photo diary of the last 15 years,” he explains.

“I’ve made the photos into an installation with the idea for it to look like a kid’s bedroom. They are all images of our New Zealand Pacific heroes, or people who might become our heroes of the future. It’s a celebration of the idea that in our own communities we have our own heroes,” he says.

While the images are displayed in a pin-up poster, pop-culture style, they show individuals working at grass roots level in fashion, music, the arts and community.

Greg Semu has taken pop culture and made it local. He has created an installation of home-grown memorabilia that local communities will relate to and be inspired by.

What: How to Tread Lightly and Live Like a Shadow –
Photography: A Fanau Affair
When: 3 May – 2 June
Where: Mangere Arts Centre, 93 Bader Drive, Mangere Town
Centre (next to the library)
Entry: FREE

ENDS

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