Face Value

Media Release: 12.04.11

Face Value

photography & film installation by Serena Giovanna Stevenson

Exhibition opens 16th April - 12th June 2011

Artist Talk: 23rd April 1.30pm at the Ashburton Art Gallery

All welcome

Face Value looks at facial tā moko in its unique environment - absorbing the viewer’s attention but refraining from entering into the history, specific cultural knowledge or politics of moko. The scenes are of real people in their homes, familiar spaces, both indoors and outdoors: we experience the sincerity, human impulse and gaze of understanding passing through the eyes of one generation to the next - from grandfather to grandchild, daughter to mother and on and on.

“I started the Face Value project in 2000 after a year of traveling and photographing a number of cultural social documentary stories. One of my aims was to counteract the fascination held by the international media and popular culture with stereotypical portrayals of Māori wearing 'fierce' facial tattoo that repeatedly highlighted a public misrepresentation of the art form. I was not interested in the generic context of moko, nor in the history or politics of the process. I am neither an anthropologist nor an academic specializing in such things. My intention was to find out what the traditional facial tattoo meant to the individual and how it came about in this fast changing world.”

“These images are personal, with each person sharing their knowledge pertaining to their experience with the moko. This is not a body of work that covers the whole Māori perspective of facial moko. It is about six personal stories presented exactly as they are. I have discovered that there are political and cultural issues attached to the idea of what moko is today, and the points of view are varied depending on age, gender, tribal affiliation, knowledge and personal experience. The images - an otherwise simple capture of people, settings and landscapes - reveal themselves to be precious steps along the journey that follows the recipient receiving his or her facial moko from the tāmoko artist, surrounded by the love of family and friends”.

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