Haukainga, True People/Home

Haukainga, True People/Home is a curated exhibition drawn from the Wellington City Council’s City Art Collection. Unashamedly Wellington-centric Haukainga, True people/Home is a show of two halves.

One half of the exhibition is made up of artworks made in response to Wellington as a place, a site, and featuring iconic people, landscapes, cityscapes and buildings past and present. The other half is made up of works by local artists.

Amongst the selected artists in the show are those who themselves are haukainga and have whakapapa connections to Wellington, to this land/whenua, with Wellington their turangawaewae/place to stand/place of belonging.

The relationship of the other artists to Wellington included in the show is maybe more transitory, it’s the place where they currently live, work and make art, a locale that feeds and informs their practice, the base they are anchored to and move from, but with deeper roots and ties perhaps elsewhere.

Curated Megan Tamati-Quennell and Paora Allen, Haukainga, True people/Home is their offering for this year’s Matariki, the cluster of stars also known as the Pleiades that rises in mid-winter and which for many Māori, heralds the start of a new year.

With Wellington home to a number of art, design, film schools, significant public and dealer art galleries, Haukainga, True people/Home is a meditation on the ecology of art in Wellington and a celebration of Wellington as a site of art, culture, history and creative energy recognised at this auspicious time of the year.