Curated by our Creative Producer Nicole Issa with the consulting of Gerome Te Peeti
Three artists Benjamin Akuila, Morgan Hogg and Bria McCarthy were invited to create response works to the Māori New Year, Matariki. The artists participated in a mentoring session Māori Artist Gerome Te Peeti and our local Darug elder Aunty Lyn Martin. After this session their task was to create a response work, we invite you to read about their response works below.
THE RESPONSE WORKS
Benjamin Akuila, Wayfinding, 2024, stoneware clay, gold spray paint, dimensions variable.
Wayfinding is a response to Matariki, the Māori New Year, a time of reflection, renewal, and connection to both the past and future. Through reimagining the nine star constellation in the medium of ceramics, I seek to honour the celestial traditions of my Tongan ancestors, who used the stars to navigate the vast Pacific.
The use of clay as a medium holds significant importance in this work, making reference to the ceramic practice of the Lapita people. These early settlers of Tonga have a rich ceramic history, with sites of ceramics being spread across the Pacific. The gold finish of the stars reflects the brilliance of these guiding lights, symbolising the knowledge, wisdom, and cultural heritage passed down through generations. This material connection bridges the ancient and the contemporary, grounding my exploration of ancestral wayfinding practices in the tangible earth. Wayfinding recontextualizes traditional practices with contemporary materials, evoking a sense of place, identity, and belonging, while also celebrating the endurance of these practices, storytelling and oral histories within the Pacific.
Artist Bio
Benjamin Akuila is a multidisciplinary artist of Tongan and Irish descent living and working in Eora and Dharug country. Akuila’s work explores ideas of cultural authenticity, and identity performances within the Tongan-Australian diaspora through the material use of clay. Akuila’s work questions the structures and maintain racial and gender identities, and aims to subvert these structures to make space for contemporary expressions. Akuila continues traditional Tongan art making, and reinvigorates them with contemporary ideas and materiality.
Morgan Hogg
Pōhutukawa is the star in Matariki’s cluster that holds the memories of the loved ones we have lost. A flowing connection to the past and our ancestors who have come before us – allowing us to sit in space of remembrance of those who have walked, navigated and lived for the pathway for us to continue. This work acts as a performative representation of acknowledgment of oral traditions – reflecting hand movements in Cook Island Ura that tell stories through dance. It extends movement as a structure of holding space for our ancestors to be present in the performance, embodying the performers who come before us. The hand movements of ‘Tiare’ (flower), ‘Moana’ (Ocean) and ‘Aere Mai’ (Come here) – commonly used gestures to represent beauty, fluidity and power of a woman.
In reference to this work and title, Kauraka Kauraka was a Cook Island poet that deeply explains his connections to our ancestors and deities – his embedded understanding of the afterworld and the worlds between.
His poem, Rainbow Woman, reminded me of Papatūānuku, Mother Earth, and the interconnectedness of the heavens and the earth and the sense of longing for someone. Your Seven Heavens looks at the movements between gods, ancestors, elements and present storytelling – how we keep these alive to keep them in our minds.
Rainbow Woman
You appear to me in dreams day and night
Your gold and black hair flows
Forming hills and valleys in full colour
Causing the living dead to look up
You came to me in bone and blood
The marrow still white the water flows
Creating coconut trees and pandanus groves
Leaving sweet fragrance of your hands in the wind
You penetrate my eyes with tender rays
Your brilliance doubling my vision
Illuminating the lava sealed paths in my soul
Releasing the fire and water within
You offer me omens of Po
Gifts of earth nail and hair
Of maire tuitui and ginger stone
Your rainbow from your seven heavens
– Kauraka Kauraka
Artist Bio
Morgan Hogg is an emerging artist and creative producer of Cook Island Māori (Ngāti Tāne), Tahitian and English descent, living and working on unceded Wangal and Dharug lands. Through the perspective of her Kūki Airani heritage, Hogg utilises installation and performance as visual representations of her own exploration of cultural displacement and identity. Making space within her practice to rely on oral exchange between her familial relations and community, Hogg continues the story of her ancestry through maintaining traditional practices within a contemporary lens.
She has completed a BVA(Hons)/ BAS (Film studies) at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. Currently studying a Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Sydney. Hogg has exhibited and performed works at Firstdraft, Performance Space, Beirut Art Centre, Sculpture by the Sea Bondi, Bankstown Arts Centre, SCA Gallery, Casula Powerhouse, PICA, Carriageworks and the Art Gallery of NSW.
Brianna McCarthy
‘The Oldest Sisters In the World’
Papercraft
By Bria McCarthy, Wiradjuri, 2024
‘This interactive shadow puppet zine is an extension of the short film “Murriyang: Seven Sisters Rising” that I made for Matiriki 2022. I wanted to make something interactive that audiences can take home and enjoy. The writing and illustration is my own adaptation of the 7 Sisters stories that exist across many Aboriginal Cultures, from which I have drawn out the themes and images that spoke most to me. This is a story that has stayed with me for years, and that I recall with a sense of kinship whenever I look to the night sky. It’s my pleasure and hope that it will be a story that many more Australians will get to know, as there is a world of story, magic and wisdom to be explored in our beautiful Southern skies. ‘ – Bria McCarthy
Artist Bio
Bria McCarthy is an autistic artist with Wiradjuri and Irish heritage. She writes and directs work for theatre, literature, film and education,with a speciality in experimental shadow puppetry. Her work was commissioned for the 2024 major exhibition ‘Dhuluny: The War That Never Ended’ at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery. In 2023 her debut solo show “Dragon Hearts” won the Sydney Fringe Award for Best Emerging Artist, and the show was selected to play in the Melbourne Fringe BlakLodge. She was the recipient of the 2022 ACE Indigenous Artist Residency, and her debut manuscript was shortlisted for the 2022 Text Prize. She is currently preparing for a return season of “Dragon Hearts’ at Sydney Fringe 2024, and a major sculpture and performance project commissioned by the Penrith Real Festival. She is also currently in mentorship with Bangarra Dance Theatre through Accessible Arts. Her work is characterised by an emphasis on multispecies storytelling, neurodivergent imagination, and it is always a little magical.
Partners and Supporters
Supported by City of Canterbury Bankstown
