OPENING EVENT: Wednesday !0 September, 5.30-7.30pm

In Fijian (vosa vakaViti) Tali means to plait or interweave, this is the approach taken in the making of this exhibition, facilitated by Claudia Jowitt. With the works weaving together references to histories and traditional practices of the South Pacific from a contemporary diasporic perspective, grounded in the whakapapa represented in this show from ‘Avaiki Nui/Kūki ‘Āirani, Hawai’i, Motu o Sāmoa, ‘Otu Tonga, Rotuma and Viti.

Tali features new and recent work from Serene Hodgman, Claudia Jowitt, Sione Monū, Ahilapalapa Rands and Salome Tanuvasa. This exhibition celebrates a shared ethos of platforming connections to homelands and the ties that bring them together as makers.

SERENE HODGMAN is of Sāmoan, Tongan, Rotuman and Irish descent, currently based in Meanjin/Brisbane, Australia. After studying at The University of Hawai’i and The University of Auckland she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2015 and a Masters in Teaching and Learning (Primary) in 2017. Inspired by her upbringing in Tāmaki Makaurau, Serene’s textile practice integrates contemporary materials with traditional handmade crafts such as tivaevae (Cook Island embroidery), ‘ie toga (Sāmoan fine mats) and Tongan koloa. She enjoys experimenting with patterns, colour and text to tell stories and reflect on what home means. 

CLAUDIA JOWITT is a Tāmaki Makaurau based artist of Fijian (iTaukei) / Pākehā descent. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts, a Bachelor of Art and Design (Hons) and Bachelor of Visual Arts from AUT University’s School of Art and Design and studied at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Fine Arts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jowitt has been exhibiting both nationally and internationally since first completing her undergraduate degree in 2009. Her works are included in The Arts House Trust Collection, University of Auckland Art Collection & Te Manawa Museum Collection.

Jowitt’s first solo exhibition in a public gallery is currently on at The Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt. The exhibition "Uana: Carried by the Waves" is a celebration of materiality, memory, and cultural resonance. Her practice is steeped in the histories and language of abstraction, drawing on a lineage of artists who have pushed paint beyond the frame—into sculptural space and the realms of process, gesture, and expression. Yet her work also charts its own course, carrying with it motifs and materials that bring together these two quite different currents in her work: shell, coral, masi, vau and seaweed are inlaid into surfaces thick with paint, resin and other mediums creating a vista of delicate, yet intensely detailed reliefs.

SIONE TUÍVAILALA MONŪ (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist of Tongan descent. Monū was born in Tāmaki Makaurau and grew up across Australia as their father was part of the Australian defence force. Their mother is a Tongan cultural knowledge holder and avid collector of Tongan crafts, adornments and ngatu (bark cloth). As a child, Monū enjoyed experimenting with materials mimicking cultural adornments having watched family in Australia making traditional adornments with non-traditional diasporic materials like beads, Monū developed early their own interpretations of the craft.

No longer considering their current practice “traditional”, Monū deems their works modern iterations of their heritage based on their present-day reality. Each work depicts a symbol of self: self in community, self in love, self in relation to family, and self-referential humour. Traditional methods blend diaspora in-jokes and personal omens. There are callouts to Monū’s queer Pacific creative collectives and friendships and often derided elements of Pacific identity and aesthetic articulating core parts of Monū’s identity.

Monū has shown their work nationally and internationally. including National Portrait Gallery Canberra, Artspace Sydney, Artspace Aotearoa, Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato, Contemporary Jewelled Art Gallery & Museum Cagnes-sur-Mer France, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Christchurch Art Gallery, Māngere Art Centre, Robert Heald Gallery and Bergman Gallery. Monu has art held in numerous public collections including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki; Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, Auckland libraries Archives and various private collections throughout New Zealand and abroad. Additionally Sione has been featured in publications such as Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania 2019, Landfall Journal May 2022, Pacific Arts Aotearoa 2023, and Sio FakaTonga ‘ae ‘Aati FakaTonga - Tongan Views of Tongan Arts 2025.

AHILAPALAPA RANDS (Kānaka Maoli/Indigenous Hawaiian, iTaukei/Indigenous Fijian, Sāmoan, Māori Kūki ‘Āirani/Cook Island Māori, Pākehā/Settler European) is an independent curator, writer and artist. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology and a Diploma in Te Reo Māori from Te Wananga o Raukawa in Ōtaki, Aotearoa. Rands is a founding member of New Zealand based art collective D.A.N.C.E. art club alongside Vaimaila Urale, Tuafale Tanoa’i aka Linda T, and Chris Fitzgerald and London based In*ter*is*land Collective alongside Lyall Hakaraia, Jo Walsh and Jessica Palalagi. 

Rands is driven to create and imagine alternative ways of creative practice. Her multidisciplinary style focuses on disrupting dominant social narratives and worldviews by prioritising non-hegemonic subjects and subjectivities. This is particularly informed by issues relevant to Indigeneity and investigating ways that settler colonisation has and continues to inform narratives and power dynamics in the Pacific. In support of these concerns, Rands has delivered lectures and presented papers on the subject of alternative exhibition practices and artistic practice as well as on decolonizing movements and art institutions.

SALOME TANUVASA is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist of Tongan and Sāmoan heritage who graduated with an MFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts in 2014. She describes her drawings and artwork as being ‘as true as they can be’. Her paintings blur the line between the mark marking and gesture of drawing and the fluid dynamics of painting, with the accent on direct and simplified applications of pigment. and tivaevae patterns than to the restraint of minimalist abstraction. Tanuvasa locates inspiration from within her Pacific heritage and European modernist icons such as Henri Matisse. For her 2024 solo exhibition at Tim Melville titled Joyous, she recounted her relationship to the French artist: ‘I’ve been looking at his colours and shapes and how he would paint fabrics and textiles … I’ve used stencils and cut-outs [as Matisse did] to make these new works too. My paintings communicate an intuitive sense of the places where I find joy – in my home and with my family.

Tanuvasa’s works are held in public and private collections throughout Aotearoa and internationally. In 2018 she was selected for the YAF Creative Award at the China Academy of Art, Huangzhou. She is the 2025 recipient of the prestigious C Trust Art Award. Salome Tanuvasa exhibits courtesy of Tim Melville Gallery.

Installation photography by Sam Hartnett.