Exhibition Announcement : Tala O Le Tau, Angela Tiatia & Yuki Kihara, Gus Fisher Gallery

Tala o le tau

6 June – 30 August 2025, Gus Fisher Gallery

Angela Tiatia (Aotearoa/Sāmoa/Australia), Yuki Kihara (Sāmoa), Moata’a Aualuma Community (Sāmoa)

Production still from Tala o le tau: Stories from the weather (2025) series by Yuki Kihara featuring members of the Moata’a Aualuma Community, Upolu Island, Sāmoa. Supported by Gus Fisher Gallery and Creative New Zealand Pacific Arts Strategy. Courtesy of Yuki Kihara, Gus Fisher Gallery and Gow Langsford, Aotearoa New Zealand.

92% of greenhouse gas emissions are produced by the Global North; the Pacific is bearing the brunt of a climate crisis that has been precipitated elsewhere. By 2030, sea levels in Sāmoa are projected to rise between 5 and 15cm.

Gus Fisher Gallery's upcoming exhibition Tala o le tau brings together new and significant bodies of work by Angela Tiatia, Yuki Kihara and women from Moata’a Aualuma Community that collectively explore themes of climate crisis, matrilineal histories and indigenous knowledge systems. Faced with the reality of increasingly frequent and devastating weather events that threaten life and livelihoods in the Pacific, these artists explore the relationship between gender, creative practice and indigenous knowledge systems as a tool to navigate an uncertain future.

The exhibition’s title Tala o le tau, meaning ‘stories from the weather’ in Sāmoan, is borrowed from the poetic translation of ‘weather forecast’ commonly used by Sāmoan weather services. It is also the title of Kihara’s new series of embroidered pandanus mats, displayed here for the first time, which render infrared satellite imagery of tropical cyclones occurring in and around Sāmoa over the last decade.

Kihara has worked collaboratively with women from Moata’a Aualuma Community, a group of skilled weavers and embroiderers based in the central north coast of Upolu Island, Sāmoa, in the creation of these five vibrantly coloured mats. Fala su'i are embroidered mats often gifted or exchanged in house blessing ceremonies, funerals, and other special occasions. Embroidered with vibrant satellite imagery, here the fala su'i form the basis of a reflective community approach towards climate change on the islands, and the importance of Pacific indigenous perspectives in global dialogues. For a preview of this body of work, please visit this link.

Angela Tiatia’s moving image work The Dark Current (2023) explores the intersection of colonialism, femininity and our relationship with the virtual and physical realm. The three-part video acknowledges the past, present and future through a Sāmoan lens; water is a recurring motif which references matrilineal ancestors and their experiences of migration. Foregrounding a network of Moana kinships, Tiatia figures Pacific femininity as one of sea-like simultaneity: strength, sensuality, glamour, and creative power.

Angela Tiatia, The Dark Current (photographic still), 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf, Australia.

The film captures the dark and chaotic feeling of the current moment whilst proposing a tomorrow where Pacific peoples have complete authority over their histories, present and future. Spanning three years and filmed in five countries, The Dark Current is Tiatia’s most ambitious project to date.

As stated by the artist, "The Dark Current has a specific shape to it, that reaches for the essence of a multi-generational experience. One that starts with my mother's generation, through to mine and on to our children."

Gus Fisher Gallery would like to acknowledge the support of Toi Aotearoa Creative New Zealand towards Yuki Kihara and Moata’a Aualuma Community’s newly commissioned work. Additional works from Kihara’s ‘Tala o le tau: Stories from the weather’ (2025) series will be presented in a group exhibition at Gow Langsford, opening in July 2025.

Angela Tiatia's The Dark Current was originally commissioned by The Ian Potter Cultural Trust under the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission for exhibition by ACMI (Australian Centre for Moving Image). With thanks to Dunedin Public Art Gallery for enabling its showing at Gus Fisher Gallery.

FOR YOUR DIARY: Exhibition opening at Gus Fisher Gallery on Friday 6 June, 5.30 - 7.30pm.

Tala o le tau artist talk with Angela Tiatia and Yuki Kihara at Gus Fisher Gallery taking place on Saturday 7 June, 2pm.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES:

Angela Tiatia is a Sāmoan/Australian artist based in Sydney. For the past 20 years, she has explored global power structures and their impact on Pasifika communities. Tiatia explores contemporary culture through performance, moving image, painting, sculpture and photography, drawing out the relationships between representation, gender, neo colonialism and the commodification of body and place. Often through the lenses of history, popular and material culture, the artist moves deftly in her compositions of still and moving image from pointed detail to satellite view addressing themes within power structures and how these impact the individual and their communities.Tiatia’s recent work The Dark Current (2023) debuted at the Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI) in 2023. Since then, the work has won the Fisher's ghost Award (2023) and toured nationally and internationally, including at Frieze London, and symposiums at Tate Modern and the Venice Biennale. Recent public commissions include Illuminate (Art Gallery of South Australia, 2023), Murmurations (in collaboration with Tony Albert, Hyde Park Barracks Commission, Museums of History NSW, 2023), The Pearl (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2021), and The Golden Hour (AGNSW, 2020). Tiatia’s work is held in numerous national and international public collections.

Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist of Sāmoan descent working and living in Sāmoa. Her work seeks to challenge dominant and singular historical narratives by exploring the intersectionality between identity politics, decolonisation and ecology through performance, sculpture, photography, film and curation. In 2022, Kihara represented Aotearoa New Zealand at the 59th Venice Biennale. Her work is held in permanent collections, among others, including the Museum of Modern Art, Manahatta New York. Kihara is an affiliate of Ecological Art Practices – a research cluster led by THE NEW INSTITUTE Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at the Ca ‘Foscari University of Venice.

Watch Kihara’s ‘Tala o le tau: Stories from the weather’ (2025) series here

Moata'a Aualuma Community are based in Upolu Island, located in the central north coast of the Independent State of Sāmoa. The group comprises 37 women renowned for the revival and production of embroidered mats called Fala (woven mat) (Su'i (embroidered) over the past few years. The group worked closely in collaboration with Kihara to develop the embroidered mats for this exhibition.

Gus Fisher Gallery is a centre for contemporary art in Tāmaki Makaurau and a project space for artists. As the flagship art gallery for Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland, Gus Fisher Gallery advocates for experimental exhibition making by being a platform for new opportunities and enabling an extension of artistic practice. Gus Fisher Gallery’s programme comprises inhouse initiated exhibitions and a public programme of events for creative a diverse communities. Housed in a 1934 heritage building, Gus Fisher Gallery shows a strength in artists moving image consistent with its building’s pioneering broadcasting history. 

Open during exhibitions Tuesday - Friday 10am 5pm, Saturday 10am-4pm

Gus Fisher Gallery

74 Shortland Street

Auckland Central

Free entry

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