Blue vs Red
KAURI HAWKINS
BLUE VS RED
15 NOV – 15 DEC 2019
Kauri Hawkins is a young emerging contemporary Māori artist who has recently graduated from Massey University’s School of Fine Arts in Wellington. Receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2017, Kauri has shown throughout the Wellington region and internationally at the first Hobiennale in Hobart Tasmania, November 2017. Kauri is from Muriwai, Tūranganui-a-Kiwa and has tribal affiliations to Ngai Tamanuhiri and Ngati Porou, Rongowhakaata and Ngati Pahauwera. He also descends from the Island of Aitiutaki in the Cook Islands.
Kauri is a sculptor, painter, film maker and performance artist whose work comments on contemporary New Zealand issues through a Māori lense. He works with materials as diverse as road signs, basketball jerseys, cigarettes and hi-viz, challenging these objects’ cultural significance as a means or self-reflection and expression.
The exhibition, ‘Blue vs Red’ is the second instalment of this work which surrounds our notion of national identity and where that stems from in history. The most poignant at this time is the arrival of Captain Cook in Tūranganui-a-kiwa or Poverty Bay two hundred and fifty years ago. The artist creates the work using foreign objects and symbols of nationalism to critique our view as people of Aotearoa New Zealand.
‘Blue vs Red’ alludes to the cross-cultural influences that impact our sense of identity and nationhood with origins outside of Aotearoa New Zealand. Objects like basketballs and road cones, symbols such as the Union Jack and Southern Cross, the origin of these objects and symbols is as important as the object/symbol itself. ‘Blue vs Red’ questions what makes us New Zealanders post-Cook.
Hawkins has exhibited in galleries throughout New Zealand alongside many leading artists in New Zealand such as Prof. Robert Jahnke, Ngatai Taepa, Robyn Kahukiwa, John Walsh and many others. His carved Kauri (native timber )work ‘Pou Whenua’ featured at the Waiheke Sculpture on the Gulf, 2019, is now part of a significant private collection here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Kauri Hawkins was born in Palmerston North in 1995 and brought up in Tūranganui-a-kiwa Gisborne. He currently lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand. This exhibition ‘Blue vs Red’ is his first solo with the Gisborne Gallery PAULNACHE.
The Gallery now represents this artists work.
Relevant links:
Red vs Blue, Hastings City Art Gallery
VICE interview with Kauri Hawkins
Sculpture on the Gulf
The Hook interview with Kauri Hawkins