From hammer and chisel, to digital router.

PAGE BLACKIE GALLERY – PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From hammer and chisel, to digital router.

Ngatai Taepa has been deeply involved in the vibrant language of painted kowhaiwhai as far back as he can remember.

Since he was a teenager, working on restoring kowhaiwhai panels, Taepa has been committed to simultaneously preserving and giving new life to traditional practices, through his artwork.

After eight years of exhibiting, his work is held in major collections around the world and is highly respected for its ability to merge traditions of carving, painting and architecture, with contemporary Pop-culture vibrancy.

Building on the traditions of the adze and the paintbrush, Ngatai creates new work utilizing 21st Century tools and media, including digital routers, coloured acrylic, PVC pipe and steel.

His distinctive works explore kowhaiwhai to its essence: from continuous line painted patterns seen in meeting houses, to the rhythm or pulse generated by the form. However, in his latest work, on show at Page Blackie Gallery, Wellington (15 September – 10 October), Taepa has personalized this concept further, by linking the pulse to the heartbeat of his newborn son.

The individual works in this new show, entitled Te Pitau a Tiki, are full-frontal figurative, tiki-inspired forms. Taepa is using abstracted portraiture to merge past and present: the traditions of his ancestors with the face of his son, who will carry these traditions forward.

Using treated plywood, the artist again opts for contemporary media. His digitally carved forms expose cross-sections of the layered ply; layers that in past work has related to levels of knowledge – as the legend of Tane’s ascension into the heavens has it.

Page Blackie Gallery co-Director Marcia Page says, “it is an honour to have Ngatai’s work in the Gallery. Every year, he extends his ability to express a plethora of deeply personal messages through his beautiful artwork. It never ceases to amaze us how skillfully he can weave timeless traditions and topical issues in one visually arresting work.”

Te Pitau a Tiki
Ngatai Taepa
15 September – 10 October 2009
Page Blackie Gallery
42 Victoria St, Wellington

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