Whakamārama Arielle Walker

“I’ve been untangling the aho of my whakapapa. Finding resonances across lines that seemed otherwise in conflict, irreconcilable. Learning to whatu, with muka, with words, with stories, with whakapapa, with everything our tūpuna have given us.”

Whakamārama
Thursday 15 April, 11am
16 Dowling Street

Join us for a conversation with artist Arielle Walker on the works in her current exhibition distance rewoven from the roots to the stem. This conversation will unravel the whakapapa connections and pūrākau embedded within the materials of Arielle’s works and the dyeing, weaving, and other textile processes Arielle uses.

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Arielle Walker (Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based contemporary artist, writer and maker.

Having recently completed a Master of Visual Arts at AUT University, her practice seeks pathways towards reciprocal belonging through the intersections and connections between land, language, and craft, focusing on tactile storytelling and ancestral narratives. Contexts that surround this include the interconnectedness of isolated islands, the intrinsic ties of language and land, migration across the swell and pull of the ocean, textile traditions passed down through generations of tūpuna wāhine, roots and botanical belongings, pūrākau ("myths" and "folklore") as non-fiction.

Excerpt from Arielle Walker’s “untangling the aho” in Tupuranga Journal Lua: A Whole New World (2020)
Image: Supplied by the artist