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Students exhibit images that tell East Coast stories
Thursday, August 30, 2012
A GROUP of students are again taking their work away from the East Coast and out of the school environment to show the general public what they can do.

Tomorrow’s opening of the exhibition A Tatou Korero: Our Stories, Our Voices will be the second time Coast students have undertaken a massive digital photography project to document their homes and their people.

The debut show, Ahi Kaa: Through Our Eyes (2010), was so successful that it went from being shown during the Ngata Memorial Lectures, in Ruatoria, to being exhibited at the Gisborne galleries of EIT’s School of Maori Art (Toihoukura) and at the country’s seat of political power . . . Paliament Building.

Organised by Te Runanganui o Ngati Porou /Ministry of Education Partnership, E Tipu E Rea, Ahi Kaa gave students the opportunity to create their own visual representations of what “home” meant to them.

This time, they have been invited to expand on the idea of telling their stories through their people. And with the first show having been so successful, competition to take part has been hot.

The call to submit work for A Tatou Korero attracted 180 entries from students from Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Kawakawa Mai Tawhiti, Te Waha o Rerekohu, Ngata Memorial College, Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Te Waiu o Ngati Porou and Tolaga Bay Area School.

Selection team Steve Gibbs, Brennan Thomas, Walton Walker and Ahi Kaa alumnai Wiremu Henry then had the unenviable task of choosing the 64 images — a dozen more than featured in Ahi Kaa — that would make up the final show.

To get to that point, however, students took a journey that required more than just looking around at what surrounded them. They had to learn photographic techniques; to consider the content of their images and how they could be interpreted in an art context; and to think about how factors like printing and framing would impact on the final work.

In explaining the kaupapa behind the original idea, spokeswoman Nori Parata said it had benefits both for the students and for the community at large: “It provides an opportunity for the talent of our rangatahi to be viewed in an authentic and culturally appropriate art context by the art community and general public in the Tairawhiti region”.

■ A Tatou Korero: Our Stories, Our Voices opens at Toihoukura’s Cobden Street gallery tomorrow (5.30pm).
OUR PEOPLE ON THE COAST: Tolaga Bay Area School student Taylor-Paige Paaka took the candid post-match shot Good Game (pictured above) that features in the exhibition A Tatou Korero: Our Stories, Our Voices, which opens in Gisborne tomorrow. Picture supplied
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