Oakville Galleries is delighted to announce the opening of our winter exhibitions— Sparkle’s Map Home, a solo exhibition by Toronto-based artist Tau Lewis; and Ka mua, ka muri, an exhibition of newly commissioned works by Aotearoa New Zealand-based artist Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa).
Please join Oakville Galleries to celebrate the opening of these exhibitions on Sunday 26 January from 2:30 pm–3:30 pm at Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square, followed by a reception at Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens from 3:30 pm–5:00 pm. Exhibits will up until March 22, 2020.
Tau Lewis: Sparkle’s Map Home
The practice of Toronto-based artist Tau Lewis is anchored in a spiritual imaginary, recuperating feelings, forms and landscapes often rendered unseen. Working primarily with found textiles and foraged objects, Lewis' works take shape through slow, labour-intensive processes such as carving, quilting and scavenging, drawing on a material and psychic resourcefulness that has long been significant to black cultural production.
For Sparkle's Map Home, Lewis harnesses a broad spectrum of seemingly modest materials to conjure a latent ancestral otherworld. Re-envisioning Gairloch Gardens as a scene from the cosmos, Lewis reflects on the possibilities of outer space as a locus of both a black past and a black future, one where that which is unbound—materially, spiritually and otherwise—is given license to take shape anew.
Free exhibition tours:
- Saturday 8 February 2020, 3:00 pm
- Saturday 14 March 2020, 3:00 pm
Shannon Te Ao: Ka mua, ka muri
Shannon Te Ao, Ka mua, ka muri (video still), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Mossman Gallery, Wellington.Shannon Te Ao, Ka mua, ka muri (video still), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Mossman Gallery, Wellington.
Ka mua, ka muri is a new sound and moving image installation by Aotearoa New Zealand-based artist Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) that explores our experience of time, history and song. The exhibition consists of a two-channel film, which uses the road movie genre as its starting point, and locates two sisters in the immediate wake of an unnamed tragic event. Following on from his most recent work what was or could be today (again) (2019), the work includes two original songs developed by Te Ao in collaboration with Kurt Komene (Te Ātiawa, Taranaki Whānui). These function as both script and score and reflect a social embodiment that privileges poetic imagery.
The exhibition's title, Ka mua, ka muri, is derived from a whakatauki (proverb) often cited as a central guiding principle within Māori ideology. Meaning “to walk backwards into the future," it suggests time exists on a continuum where past, present and future co-exist and are inherently tethered through ancestry and action. Central to this is an understanding of the critical importance of language as a vital means to maintain links to indigenous knowledge systems, culture, and identity, a theme that recurs throughout Te Ao's practice.
Ka mua, ka muri has been co-commissioned by Oakville Galleries and Remai Modern, with the support of Creative New Zealand.
Free exhibition tours:
- Saturday 8 February 2020, 2:00 pm
- Saturday 14 March 2020, 2:00 pm
Release provided the Oakville Galleries