A Māori artist collective’s dazzling, intricate canopy woven from reflective trucking straps has been awarded a prestigious global art prize – the first time a New Zealand artwork has won the award.
On Saturday, the jury of the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale awarded New Zealand’s Mataaho Collective the Golden Lion for best international participation for its work Takapau – a large-scale installation inspired by Māori takapau, finely woven mats made for special events.
Mataaho collective is made up of four Māori artists: Erena Arapere-Baker, Sarah Hudson, Bridget Reweti and Terri Te Tau, who have worked together on large installations since 2012.
The collective expressed their gratitude for the win in a post to their Instagram page.
“It doesn’t feel like just our award, but recognition of our supportive families, our visionary colleagues, our generous mentors and the Indigenous artists of the future.”
Its winning 200sqm suspended weaving is made from six kilometres of fluorescent trucking straps , 480 stainless steel buckles and ratchets, and 960 J-hooks – safety materials used in labouring jobs and chosen to reflect the artists’ working-class backgrounds.
After the announcement, Mataaho artist Sarah Hudson told RNZ the artists hoped to make gallery spaces more relatable to communities outside the art world.
“We all come from working class whānau [families] and the materials we choose to use are a mihi [tribute] to them, who may not feel at home in the art gallery – we like to use materials they know and experience every day, so they have something to recognise in the art world.”
The Biennale judges picked Takapau out from hundreds of entries for its “impressive scale” and noted that it was a feat of engineering “only made possible by the collective strength and creativity of the group”.
“Mataaho Collective has created a luminous woven structure of straps that poetically crisscross the gallery space,” the judges said in their announcement.
“The dazzling pattern of shadows cast on the walls and floor harks back to ancestral techniques and gestures to future uses of such techniques.”
Caroline Vercoe, associate professor in art history at the University of Auckland, told the Guardian part of the beauty of Mataaho’s work is its ability to work collectively to weave together complex Māori concepts with indigenous art forms and every-day materials.
The Golden Lion award tends to acknowledge something of a “turning point” within certain art practices or thinking, Vercoe said.
“Mataaho and Māori artists are really leading the way with contemporary art practices,” she said.
“We have always known the power of contemporary Māori art and it is just wonderful to see that acknowledged globally.”
Creative New Zealand – the country’s arts funding body – said five Māori artists, including Mataaho Collective, were invited to show at the international exhibition.
Mataaho’s win was a historic moment, said Creative New Zealand’s Amanda Hereaka.
“This award recognises, on the biggest global platform, the importance and relevance of [Māori art] and New Zealand art; we should all celebrate this wonderful achievement.”
New Zealand’s arts, culture and heritage minister, Paul Goldsmith, congratulated the collective for their win.
“This win is a glowing endorsement of the brilliant work of the Mataaho collective and shows, again, our artists are world leaders.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
