Maori artists going global

By RICHARD PAMATATAU

A new "cybertribe" of Maori artists is harnessing the web to take paintings, sculpture, mixed media, weaving and glassworks to the world art market.

The "tribe" has launched Maoriartnz.com, a website that acts like a digital showcase of art representing some of the best Maori artists in the country. The site links potential buyers with artists carrying out commissioned works and tells the stories behind their artworks.

It joins a growing band of websites that are looking to take New Zealand art to the world. Fishers Fine Arts is conducting online auctions and making big overseas sales - a C.F. Goldie piece sold for $589,625 and a Michael Illingworth for $233,625.

Artists are banding together to display their art online in the hope of attracting overseas buyers armed with stronger currency.

Bryan Evans, director of Maoriartnz, says his vision for the site is to get the work of contemporary Maori artists out to a much bigger audience than the traditional gallery environment provides.

That said, the site is also offering a 1966 oil and mixed media painting of Rangitoto by sought-after Maori artist Ralph Hotere.

Evans said the global art buying market was always looking for artists who had new ways of showing or presenting the world, and the success of Maori exhibitions organised by organisations like the arts council were always well received.

The Kiwa exhibition in Canada in 2003 was the most recent opportunity for people to see Maori art on a big scale, he said.

Kelly Mitchell, a New Plymouth-based artist selling through the site, sold some of her works to the personal make-up artist of actor Tom Cruise when The Last Samurai was being made in New Zealand.

"It's the taste of those kinds of people who come to the work with fresh eyes that the site is hoping to tempt too," said Evans. "But the site cannot be static. If a collector sees something by an artist but wants to maybe have something of their own made then we have to be able to facilitate that process."

Evans said Maoriartnz would not just be a web environment. He has also organised exhibitions at "gallery-like spaces" to coincide with events in Auckland.

One such place is the Sierra coffee shop in mostly white middle-class Takapuna. Evans said the reaction from the regulars there had been supportive.

"Most of them, to be frank, had never seen this kind of work before."

Evans will also be building a permission-based newsletter from a database people can sign up for, as well as looking to find on-the-ground representatives in the United States and Europe to work with Maoriartnz.

Maori artist Carin Wilson, known for his design of the Maori Television station building and his furniture pieces at the Wellington Public Library, is selling a range of new work as well as more traditional pieces through the site.

He has exhibited in many places around the world and many of his pieces are held by serious collectors.

Wilson said the internet was an obvious step to take fresh works and ideas to the global art market. "Maori are traditionally explorers and this site is just a kind of cyberwaka that we are on that lets us reach a different destination.

"Experience tells me that there is a thirst for Maori art of many kinds, but one of the big problems is that access to the artists is often difficult."

He said society did not always recognise this kind of work, as "art" was as much as anything else about shifting boundaries in people's thinking.

Wilson is introducing "tohu", or signature marks, from the Treaty of Waitangi as small works on the site. "I was studying the treaty and decided that the marks made by Maori who did not have a formal written language were very beautiful forms and worthy of representing in another environment."

He said he was not looting from the past for content but giving the original creators of the marks a chance to "live in another way".

Other artists exhibiting are Andrew Panoho, Angela Viiga, Claudine Muru, James Atutahi, Kelly King, Kelly Mitchell, Priscilla Cowie, Roi Toia and Todd Couper.


Artist links:

Fisher Fine Arts

Judith Anderson Gallery

Art Bureau

Jonathan Grant Galleries

Kura Gallery

Monterey Art Gallery

Art Maori

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Soca

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