‘The woman whose back was a whetstone’: Artist Talk with Ana Iti

A familiar shape – the concrete akmon form that makes up the breakwaters which define Port Taranaki – is given new meaning as a reference to Hine-tua- hōanga, the atua wāhine (female deity) who stands as a grindstone.

On Saturday the 13th of November visitors heard from the artist Ana Iti about her inspiration and process in creating this work for ‘Swallowing Geography’.

Swallowing Geography

8 Oct 2021 – 13 Feb 2022

Matt Pine, Shona Rapira Davies, Kate Newby, Ana Iti

Swallowing Geography is an exhibition that explores our relationship with land and place. It is about how we absorb the landscape and our built environment and how we ingest or take in the histories of sites and places both explicit and oblique

The show is centred on the particular whenua (lands) and histories of Taranaki.  It also encompasses ‘peripheral situations’, the ephemeral ‘nature of interactions’ and the ‘overlooked everyday.’ They are notions that are realised through the responses of four leading contemporary New Zealand artists.

Matt Pine (Te Ātiawa, Te Atihaunui-a- Pāpārangi and Ngāti Tūwharetoa), Shona Rapira Davies (Ngāti Wai ki Aotea), Kate Newby (Auckland, New Zealand, Texas and New York, USA) and Ana Iti (Te Rarawa), were invited to create site responsive works for the exhibition.

Integral to Swallowing Geography is also an acknowledgement of Ngāti Te Whiti iwi as haukaingā and mana whenua of Ngā Motu (New Plymouth).

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