distance rewoven from the roots to the stem Arielle Walker

Opening preview: Wednesday 14 April, 5.30pm
Rāapa 14 Pāenga-whāwhā, 5:30pm

Exhibition runs: 15 April – 15 May 2021
Rāpare 15 Pāenga-whāwhā ­— Rāhoroi 15 Haratua

 “A Whatuora approach [...] insists that we actively reclaim and restore, unpick and re-weave, a culturally well and clear vision of our present realities and, importantly, create a vision for the future.” - Hinekura Smith, 2019

distance rewoven from the roots to the stem presents new work by Tāmaki Makaurau based practitioner Arielle Walker. Beginning with the relationship between storytelling and traditional crafts passed down over generations, the work references lines of her tūpuna wāhine and looks towards her ancestral homelands, particularly Taranaki, Scotland, and Ireland. Mending the disconnections and ruptures that have occurred over time–through colonialism in and from these homelands–Walker is engaged in the act of reclaiming and restoring, unpicking and reweaving that Hinekura Smith describes: a small, quiet act of decolonising the self. 

Public Programme:

Whakamārama
Thursday 15 April
11am

Kōrerorero
Wednesday 12 & Thursday 13 May
12—2pm
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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.