Road Works
KAURI HAWKINS
ROAD WORKS
11–31 DECEMBER 2020
![Kauri Hawkins [installs]-7.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/533b791ae4b0fcdc78c5af4a/1607639874551-3H9HO7R6H19UCU0F4LI6/Kauri+Hawkins+%5Binstalls%5D-7.jpg)
ROAD WORKS is the latest series of new work by contemporary artist Kauri Hawkins which is based around the navigation of whenua through road signs. Road signs for Hawkins represent the contemporary markers of navigation that parallel what star constellations were for his tipuna as they travelled through Te-Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa (Pacific Ocean) in comparison to modern times, when our contemporary waka now travel along black tar-seal rivers that cover Papatuanuku.
Hawkins’ ROAD WORKS offers up an ideology of what a Māori road signs may look like, whilst examining the act of road maintenance as a contemporary form of ‘working the land’. Hawkins aims his gaze at tangāta whenua who work the land, commonly adorned in hi-viz apparel, contemplating the motives of wealth over health in the name of industry, at the expense of whenua Māori.
Biography
Kauri Hawkins is a sculptor, painter, film maker and performance artist whose work comments on contemporary New Zealand identity through a Te Ao Māori lense. He works materials such as road signs, basketball jerseys, cigarettes and hi-viz apparel through drawing and design, challenging these objects’ cultural significance as a means or self-reflection and expression.
Hawkins has exhibited in galleries throughout Aotearoa New Zealand alongside many leading artists including Prof. Robert Jahnke, Ngatai Taepa, Robyn Kahukiwa & John Walsh. His carved Kauri sculpture ‘Kauri Pou Whenua’ (native timber) featured at the Waiheke Sculpture on the Gulf, 2019, is now part of a significant private collection here in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Significant past exhibitions include ‘He tohu’, Jhanna Millers Gallery, Wellington, NZ; ‘COMMONER’ at St. Paul St Gallery in Auckland, 2020; Sculpture on the Gulf, Waiheke Island, 2019; ’The Future of Work’, The Dowse, Lower Hutt in 2019; ‘Blue vs Red’, at PAULNACHE, Gisborne & ‘Red vs Blue’, Hastings City Art Gallery, 2019; ‘Hobienale’, November 2017 in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
Upcoming exhibitions include the commission for Objectspace's next plinth project in Auckland, scheduled for March 2021, invitational exhibition at The Suter Gallery, Nelson curated by Sarah McClintock
Hawkins was born in 1995 in Palmerston North. Brought up in Muriwai, Tūranganui-a-Kiwa Gisborne, he has tribal affiliations to Ngai Tamanuhiri, Ngati Porou, Rongowhakaata and Ngati Pahauwera. He also descends from Aitiutaki in the Islands of Avaiki (Cook Islands). He recently graduated from Massey University with a BFA (Hons) and is currently completing a MFA at Massey University in Wellington.
Kauri Hawkins is represented by PAULNACHE, Gisborne.