Robyn Kahukiwa AS 90913 v4 internal assessment Blog 3

 Tracey Tawhiao 

https://redartgallery.com/collections/tracey-tawhaio

Tracey Tawhiao is an artist with a wide range of artistic abilities: poetry, painting, performance and filmmaking. She is known for using newspapers as the base of her artworks. She layers on top blocks of colours and Maori symbols and separates them into grids. 

Text and Image are demonstrated in this artwork through the only word in the whole artwork "SPRING" and the blues and pinks that give off a very peaceful and positive vibe. Because of the word Spring, the entire image's meaning got clearer. She used two korus hanging of a stem symbolizing new life and new beginnings just as how spring is symbolized that way.

The text helped me understand the image more because, without the word "SPRING" in the image, I would've had a different perspective towards it and interpreted it in another way. Without the text, I would've interpreted it differently.

Tracey Tawhiao's artworks are separated into grids and mostly consists of unique patterns with mostly korus and fishes, while Robyn Kahukiwa's artworks consist of one image with one or multiple people 

Robyn Kahukiwa paints humans while Tracey Tawhiao doesn't

Tracey Tawhiao's paintings are flat while Robyn's aren't. 

Robyn's colour choices are very dark while Tracey's are a lot more vibrant.

AS 90913: Robyn Kahukiwa Text and Image - Blog Post 2

How does the arrangement help the story?

In this artwork, the color scheme she uses is dark green, yellow, brown, and dark red. These colors kind of give you an uncomfortable feeling along with the women with empty staring eyes and titled heads resembling a hei tiki. But one of them is facing away from the audience. She looks like she's resting or perhaps in pain of bearing the child. 

What does Robyn Kahukiwa have to say about being a woman and being Maori in her artwork?

As Robyn Kahukiwa was born in Australia, she lost her connection with her family and culture until she was 19 and returned to New Zealand. She then rediscovers her Maori heritage. She creates artwork that is mostly about Maori women's empowerment. As women in the media are misportrayed, She paints backgrounds of stormy skies, lava eruptions, and puddles that resemble blood behind Maori women who would usually wear feathers symbolizing leadership and standing up tall and staring straight at the audience. She also often paints women who are pregnant showing that women are the start of life.

The difference between realism and stylization of figures. How does Kahukiwas's style reflect this?

As I have mentioned before, Robyn Kahukiwa draws some women in her paintings head tilting resembling the hei tiki. Other New Zealand artists influenced her works like Colin McCahon, we can see his influence on Robyn Kahukiwa's work from the way she paints some of her backgrounds and Ralph Hotere, where we can see his influence through her color choice and how she conveys her messages through her paintings. Another artist which influenced her art from Mexico named Frida Kahlo. Frida Kahlo paints her portraits always staring at the audience without expressions and staying still with no dynamic movements. Through the influence of these artists, Robyn is able to stylize her works creating her own reality. If the art style used was realism, I personally think it would give more impact but you will get too lost in the details of the face instead of looking at the whole picture. The stylization helps with understanding the meaning of the image even though the figures don't have any expression, it still looks dynamic.

Tracey Tawhiao

 In art, we have been looking at different Maori artists. We painted artworks in reference to Tracey Tawhiao's art. She is famous for her subversive artworks made of newspaper with controversial ideas. She paints over the long paragraphs creating grids to overlay various patterns. We then replicated her technique by first picking a subject out of a newspaper by highlighting words.

 I chose battle and justice, then a sentence "Life has changed for us already". Then block out the newspaper's paragraphs with white paint and then layering them with the two colors I chose. Red and Orange. I surrounded the word battle with red because it represents bloodshed.  

Below that, I painted a musket and patu to represent the musket wars among Maori between 1807 and 1837.

"The Life has changed for us already" Which is surrounded by korus which represents life. 

I then painted a lady which is inspired by another Maori artist named Robyn Kahukiwa. I replicated the flat style and the way she draws her figures tilting their heads resembling the hei tiki, then painted a red circle behind her that I smudged a bit to blend with the background. 

I then surrounded the word justice with feathers that symbolize the Parihaka where children and women wore feathers on their heads as peaceful resistance to keep their land from being invaded. Below are weights that represent justice. 

On two of the orange blocks, I painted triangles with black, white, and red paint that represent mountains.

 In Wananga, we have been working on some of the tasks from Ms. Mclarens site about International Women's Day. 

For one of the tasks, I made a poster based on the fact sheet in celebrating IWD for 100 years.

Wananga- Kai

 This week, the Ka Ora Ka Ako started where we are served food to eat for 15 minutes. We rearranged our tables so that our class could eat as a family. At first, It was really weird how when we are sitting in the new table arrangement, we are facing another person in front of us. Someone who I was not familiar with and it made me feel uncomfortable, but as we kept doing it every day, It still felt uncomfortable but not as uncomfortable as the first time. 

 Today we were served a Sandwich, a slice and a banana. I liked the banana because the fruits are cool. Tomorrow we will have The Brown rice Buddha bowl with slaw and either chicken tenderloins or falafel. 

 

 

AS 90913: Robyn Kahukiwa Text and Image - Blog Post 1

  Text And Image Source

1.  "Throughout history, written words have been combined with visual images in a form which ranges from the explanatory to the enigmatic, from the constructive to the contradictory, from the iconic to the irreverent, and so on." -  Leslie Ross

" Medieval illustrated manuscripts, in all their variant forms, often exhibit extremely creative and close associations of words and pictures." - Leslie Ross

"texts and pictures and it becomes quite clear that the basic concepts and possibilities for text/image combinations really have a great deal of continuity even though many people might not immediately make these types of connections." - Leslie Ross

Text and image combined have been used for a very long time. 

Robyn Kahukiwa uses text in images to enhance her artwork. If the text wasn't there then the whole meaning of the image would change. Without the text, we would think that this is just another painting staring at you but the words make the image look more impactful especially that it is in Maori since it is her culture. 

The image shows a woman who is wearing a blue garment and a headpiece in the shape of a koru. She also has a baby in her stomach so this shows that this woman is a mother. The red background contrasts with the blue garments that the mother is wearing which make her pop out of the image. The focal point in the image is also the face since it has the most details in the artwork. 

According to google translate, "he tapu te tinana whahine o te whare na te mea tangata te" means "the female body of the house is sacred because it is human"

 Tangata Whenua meaning People of the land. This image demonstrates Text and Image well with the black background making the white text pop out. The text is also repeated a bunch of times " Tangata Whenua" translated to  "People of the Land" to remind us and to not forget.  At the centre of the image, there is an image of a Maori person and their hair surrounding items which represents their culture and text labelling them. 

Notes To Self

Note to self is a book with quotes that talks about feelings and emotions. We have been doing this for 2 weeks in our Wananga class.