A recent exhibition at the National Art Gallery in Suva marked the iTaukei new year, and a collaboration between two artists exploring their roots and routes taken.
‘Vulaiwerewere’ opened on June 21, the first day of the indigenous new year. It brought together artists Ropate Kama and Rachael Halstead, who draw/paint and carve respectively, to mediate on traditional totems and elements.
The exhibition was a year or so in thinking, planning and ex- ecuting, said the artists, who described the process of artmaking together as ‘healing through reconnecting’.
Kama reflected on Vulaiwerewere as ‘the beginning of our survival’, a time for clearing and weeding a plantation, and planting – specifically yams.
The exhibition centred around various elements or totems; sky-manumanu, earth/vanua-kau, and ocean-ika, and showed how those elements and totems flow and relate to each other.
It took the artists some time to find a similar flow. At first, Kama created the illustrations, while Halstead simultaneously worked on frames for them. But when they came together, they realised the artworks were not in harmony.
In the end, Halstead created the frames first, and then Kama created his art in response to the spaces they offered him, what
Halstead described as a reversal of the usual/Western way of doing things, where the frames come later.
Kama said this enabled them both to become vessels for inspiration.
This wasn’t an easy process. Kama talked about how they had to find a way to move and flow together, to find a rhythm and calm, and have their work speak to each other – saying this took some time.
Kama roots much of his work in research; conversations, reading, and visiting the national archives and USP library, and their collections on indigenous knowledge. Halstead draws her creativity from nature. She often works with wood that is offcuts or recycled, and seeks to honour the life and provenance of the trees she uses.
Halstead hoped that the collaboration demonstrated to other artists the joy that can be found in creating new things together.
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