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Collaborative, Multidisciplinary Exhibitions Platform Four Wāhine Artists

Tuesday, 24 January 2023, 6:13 am
Press Release: Depot Artspace

Depot Artspace presents the first shows of the 2023 curated gallery programme - ‘Muramura of Protest’ showcasing Zena Elliott and Tia Barrett and ‘Blue Fleur’ a collaboration between Sandra Bushby and Natalie Guy 

Devonport, Auckland – To coincide with the rebranding of Depot, the umbrella arts organisation housing Depot Artspace, Depot General Manager Amy Saunders and Depot Artspace Curator and Exhibition Manager Nina Dyer are please to present the first two shows of the year featuring wāhine artists at different stages of their careers from emerging to established.

Zena Elliott and Tia Barrett 

In the Street-front gallery space ‘Muramura of Protest’, a loud and gentle exhibition, explores the relationships between gender identity and Māori culture highlighting the importance of having a presence and voice from a mana takatāpui and wāhine position. 

Zena Elliott (Ngāti Awa, Te Whanau ā Apanui, Te Arawa, Ngai Te Rangi, Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngāti Raukawa, Whakatōhea, Tūwharetoa) is an established Waikato based multidisciplinary artist positioned within a contemporary painting and whakairo art practice. Tia Barrett (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mamoe, Te Rapuwai, Waitaha, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Tamainupō) is an emerging Waikato based moving image practitioner and photographer. 

The kupu muramura means vivid with colour. Within the context of this exhibition, Elliott and Barrett employ the notion of vividness to express the visibility of takatāpui artists through an immersive creative encounter. Offering an inclusive environment of toi whakairo, moving image, placard painting and experimental sound that provides a sense of belonging. 

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Sandra Bushby and Natalie Guy

Sandra Bushby and Natalie Guy (Ngāpuhi, Ngāruahine) had long admired each other’s work and the shared qualities between their chosen mediums. But it was a conversation about the sense of atmosphere which their works similarly sought to achieve, and the subsequent revelation that both draw inspiration from literary sources in which they find this quality that initiated their collaborative project ‘Blue Fleur’ in Depot Artspace’s Central gallery.

Previously Bushby has drawn from the poetry of Hilda Doolittle in Sea Garden, which evocatively describes land and seascapes; Guy the short stories of W. G. Sebald in The Rings of Saturn, in which a traveller recounts a walking tour of a familiar but distant English countryside. For this exhibition, the established painter (Bushby) and sculptor (Guy) turn their sights to the interdisciplinary practice of Joanna Margaret Paul (1945-2003), specifically her Like Love Poems and a painted series the artists view as a physical corollary in its expressive symbolism of space and colour, Paul’s Stations of the Cross (c. 1971), installed in St Mary, Star of the Sea Church in Port Chalmers.

Borrowing its title from a poem by Paul, in ‘Blue Fleur’ Bushby and Guy respond to poetic language across boundaries of medium, opening the edges between the materiality of language, emergent painting processes, and stained glass as a vessel for sculptural translation. The translucence of soft oil paint entwined with the transparency inherent in stained-glass merge together, questioning how ecologies of material matters have shifted over time. 

 Researching the linguistic signs and forms that make up the art of poetry, Bushby translates them into a corresponding set of painterly signs and forms. Represented by Suter Gallery in Tauranga, Bushby has exhibited at Window Gallery, Two Rooms, George Fraser Gallery, Melanie Roger, and Elam Project Space. Her work is held at the Te Papa and Auckland Museum collections. She is currently a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Auckland, with an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts.

Guy’s sculptural practice investigates how the process of literary translation can be applied to sculpture, inhabiting the role of the translator as an author of new works that collapse both physical and cultural sources. She utilises a range of media including steel, fibreglass, bronze, and recently stained glass. 

A multiple award-winning artist, Guy’s work has been exhibited widely throughout Aotearoa in public and private galleries and exhibitions, including Tauranga Art Gallery, Te Tuhi Auckland, Scape Public Art Christchurch, and Sculpture on the Gulf Waiheke. In 2022 she completed a doctorate in Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland. She was the recipient of the inaugural Asia NZ Foundation 2017 Residency to Varanasi India and in 2019 was resident at Sculpture Space, Utica, NYS. Her 2020 work The Pool is a permanent public work in Christchurch.

Opening Event: ‘Muramura of Protest’: Zena Elliott and Tia Barrett and ‘Blue Fleur’: Sandra Bushby and Natalie Guy and open on Saturday 4th Feb 2-4pm at Depot Artspace, 28 Clarence St, Devonport. All Welcome, free entry. Both exhibitions run until 28 February 2023.

About Depot Artspace: 

Depot is a centre for creative futures. 

Based in Devonport since 1996, Depot’s galleries are an integral part of Depot’s unique arts ecosystem. Depot Artspace now runs a curated gallery programme with an annual call for proposals. Curator and Exhibition Manager Nina Dyer is committed to hosting two shows every month in the gallery spaces, platforming artists at all stages of their careers.

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