Searching for self

As the year draws to a close, two of Palmerston North's visual artists are holding an exhibition to remember times past.

A friendship that began over blurry paintbrushes has grown into a shared artistic exploration for David Pearce and Kelvin Kara.

The local artists met at Massey University's Te Putahi A Toi School of Maori Studies, while studying towards their Masters in Maori Visual Arts.

Drawn together by many sleepless nights spent working in their studios, they decided to aim towards a joint exhibition.

That was a year ago, and Kia Mahara opens at Thermostat Gallery next Friday night. The words in English mean "to remember", and the art tries to ask how memories create identity, and how we think about the past.

Circles are used by both artists to create a narrative – but in terms of how their works appear, that's where the similarity ends. So what's the story?

David Pearce

Ever since he can remember, David Pearce has been obsessed with identity.

"I'm a naturally reflective person. I like to think about who I am, where I sit, what influences me," he says.

"I also think it's really important to think about identity as part of maturing as an individual, to build up more of a sense of self and who you are."

A lecturer in graphics at Palmerston North UCOL, two years ago Pearce felt he needed a new challenge. So he signed up for the Masters in Maori Visual Arts course, a move he figured would be both confronting and enlightening.

"I'm Pakeha, and I thought it would be an interesting place to look at Pakeha identity. Because it's a Maori visual arts course it is Maori studies, you are going into a place where you're a minority and looking at yourself from a different perspective."

Completing his work since has been an "interesting, reflective process," he says.

All four works for Kia Mahara have been finished in the last year.

They are concerned with how people remember their past, and how culture is created through the family and the home, Pearce says.

"I'm looking at the demonstration of culture in families, and how it is related to the domestic environment.

"A lot of male identity in New Zealand has been to do with the outside, and I'm kind of working with the domestic as a way of kind of challenging stereotypes and gender."

Everyone has their identities shaped by a mix of influences – such as the language that was used in their home, stories that were told, and commodities that take on a special meaning, he says.

For him that commodity is milk-bottle racks, which remind him of the practical aspects of growing up in a family of six. He incorporates these domestic objects into his work, inviting the viewer to construct their own narrative.

"I don't want to be prescriptive and directive."

And after all the searching, has Pearce figured out his own identity?

"No, it's an evolving thing."

Kelvin Kara

Things were quiet in Coastal Taranaki until film star Tom Cruise came along.

Kelvin Kara had been studying film in New Plymouth, and with a few words to the right people he landed a job on Cruise's 2003 movie, The Last Samurai.

But working on the set took its toll, and after the wrap he found himself wondering whether he was headed on the right path.

"After that movie, I questioned where my life was going, and I just had an epiphany," says Kara.

"So I moved here in 2004 to study Maori Visual Arts at Massey, and I'm still here – missing the ocean," he laughs.

A coastal boy at heart, Kara's first works in 2006 were heavily influenced by his love of the water. In a graduate show at Te Manawa, he presented paintings in which he explored the teachings of his ancestors, linking the twin treasures of water and greenstone.

"I was looking personally at what was taonga to me," Kara says.

David Pearce and Kelvin Kara have different styles, but have been drawn together by their fascination with the creation of memories and identity. <b>MICHELLE DUFF</B> asks for some history.

Three years later, and he is still trying to get to the bottom of what is important to both him and his ancestors.

He has moved on to working with light boxes, developing his own process of painting layers onto carefully constructed perspex squares before illuminating the whole box.

As part of his Masters research, Kara has been concentrating on the story of Ranginui and Papatuanuku, the sky father and earth mother, and how, in Maori mythology, light was first brought to the world.

He tries to keep this narrative in his mind as he paints, thinking about the different aspects of light according to a Maori world view.

"I kind of see them [the light boxes] as little petri dishes. I'm doing these little experiments – when you see them it's kind of like looking through a microscope at my work.

"It's me digging into what I've read and what I've been given and trying to reveal it, it's all that hidden knowledge that I'm trying to reveal."

Although his work doesn't look like traditional Maori art – there are no koro patterns or other Maori motifs – it can still be considered Maori art because it is derived through Maori concepts, he says.

"To me it's about moving forward. As people, we need to break down these barriers of what is conceived as Maori art."

And, like Pearce, Kara is happy for viewers to draw their own conclusions. "Everyone brings their own set of values and memories to the work, and it is left open to being interpreted."

* Kia Mahara opens at Thermostat Gallery next Friday, December 4, and runs until Thursday, December 24.

- © Fairfax NZ News