Peata Larkin: Māmā (2023)

Using and referencing both "the woven narratives of traditional tukutuku and tāniko … full of oppositions and grids, drawing on twentieth-century theories of abstract art … yet entirely anchored in Te Ao Māori, tikanga and Māoritanga,"1 with this Māmā series of yellow acrylic on embroidered silk, Peata Larkin has emerged as a major figure in contemporary New Zealand art.

Using the certainties, music, symbolism and rhythms of pattern, the tactility of paint and lines hovering in front space, the conjunctions of advancing and receding sensations as well as the mutating presences of shadows which animate these very surfaces, Larkin has pioneered a new way of working whilst retaining direct linkage to the geometric patterns and "abstract traditions of kowhaiwhai."2

All at once part painting, part sculpture, and part weaving, Larkin uses yellow and its warmth as if it was drawn straight from the sun. Each work bathes and envelopes the viewer in its dappling, forceful, renewing light. Endlessly formal and endlessly abstract, these significant and, it must be said, quite wonderful works contain stories and multitudes as they also express the mnemonics of whakapapa.

1. Andrew Paul Wood, Māmā > < Whenua, Two Rooms Auckland, 2022
2. Ibid