2001 - 2009 Selected Exhibitions

• 2012
• 2011
• 2010
• 2009-2001

Ani O'Neill, P.Koteka, M.Tangaroa - Return Descendant
Paintings, Installation
Exhibition January 14-25
Open 13 January, 6pm
BCA Rarotonga

Loretta Reynolds, Apii Rongo, Varu Samuel, Daniel Tomokino - VAKA
Paintings, Sculpture
Exhibition 1- 15 March
Opening 28 Feburary, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

Tim Buchanan, Apii Rongo, Eruera Nia, Daniel Tomokino, Loretta Reynolds, Varu Samuel, Ian George, M.Tangaroa - Te Ata Ou
Paintings, Sculpture
Exhibition 16-24 May
For the 7th Symposium of the Pacific Arts Association, Christchurch, New Zealand
A BCA Group Show, Gallery O, The Arts Centre, Christchurch NZ.

Over the past two years, a dominant new art culture has evolved on Rarotonga. Its origins are complex and combine its exotic postcard history with a new, educated group of Cook Islands artists that not only seek to explore concepts of identity and lifestyle but more importantly document a vital moment in our history where a society in transition sometimes finds that it is at odds with itself.

Sylvia Marsters, Loretta Reynolds, M. Tangaroa - O'Ora Te Moenga
Paintings
Exhibition 11-25 October
Opening 10 October, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

Mark Cross, M.Tangaroa - Exiles in Paradise
Paintings
Exhibition 15-28 November
Opening 14 November, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

2004

Apii  Rongo, Akara’anga Ou
Paintings
Exhibition 10-23 March
Opening 9 March, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

An exciting blend of colour, mythology and legend, Rongo's new works achieve a new level as he continues to question the position of tradition and culture in a modern polynesian context.

Judith Kunzle, Varu Samuel, Daniel Tomokino, Apii Rongo - Ura Piani
Paintings, Sculpture, Installation
Exhibition 12 October - 5 November
Opening 11 October, 6pm
BCA Group show @ Reef Gallery, 84-86 Symonds St, Auckland, NZ

2005

Loretta Reynolds, Tim Buchanan, Apii Rongo, Varu Samuel - Recent works
Paintings
Exhibition 1 - 14 April
Opening 31 March, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

Michel Tuffery, E Taingauru Ma Rima Etu
Paintings, Video, Sculpture
Exhibiition 28 July - 16 August
Opening 27 July, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

Amongst Michel Tuffery's most recognized works are his corned beef tin bull sculptures. These works seek to redress the social, political and environmental issues related to all forms of 'cultural import' to the pacific arena. His artworks are held in the collections of the Machida Museum (Japan), The National Gallery of Australia, The Queensland Art Gallery, The Sydney Maritime Museum. The British Maritime Museum, The Frankfurt Art Museum, Te Papa Tongarewa - The National Auckland Museum, The Auckland Art Gallery, The Christchurch Art Gallery and the Pataka Museum.

Tim Buchanan, Akairo Nui
Paintings
Exhibition 31 August - 17 September
Opening 30 August, 6pm
BCA Solo show @ Reef Gallery, 84-86 Symnds St, Auckland, NZ

Judith Kunzle, Dancing on Paper
Paintings, Drawings, Prints
Exhibition 11-31 October
Opening 10 October, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

2006

Richard Boyd Dunlop, Cross the Road to Jacks
Paintings
Exhibition 8-21 March
Opening 9 March, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

Tim Buchanan, M.Tangaroa - Pauanga
Paintings
Exhibition 5-21 July
Opening 4 July, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

2007

M.Tangaroa, In Due Course
Paintings
Exhibition 1-18 May
Opening 30 April, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga


Andy Leleisi'uao, M.Tangaroa - Scriptures from the West
Paintings
Exhibition 1-15 September
Opening 31 August, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

2009

M. Tangaroa, M101
Photography
Exhibition 9-27 June
Opening 8 June, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

On June 8, 2009, the all new purpose built BCA artspace was officially opened by the Minister of Culture & Art the Hon. Wilkie Rasmussen with a keynote address by Auckland City Art Gallery Senior Curator Ron Brownson. The BCA artspace opening was accompanied by the exhibition M101, a series of photograhs taken in NYC by M.Tangaroa. 

Harlem & the Island - Florence Syme-Buchanan
The very real prospect of possibly “being decked” for taking candid photographs would be enough to make most amateurs stash their cameras away. Not Mahiriki Tangaroa.
Tangaroa dismissed the “high risk” element of photographing Harlem NY and her fascinating environment and subjects in favour of capturing the contrasts of a long established African American cultural centre and island life. The urban and the island.
It was only when a large African-American woman became a little too menacing that Tangaroa lowered her lens and engaged in a bit of island PR. She smiled, talked about home being the Cook Islands and her forthcoming exhibition in capital Rarotonga where the photos would be featured. This is the Islander in Harlem, NY. Would the scary black woman been just a bit impressed if Tangaroa had imparted the fact that her surname is the same as that of the Polynesian god of the sea? Probably not. But she was eventually interested to learn that Tangaroa had travelled thousands of miles from a remote Pacific island to New York in pursuit of her love of art.
“The clear vibrancy, the cultural tension you could just sense it when visiting, it was high risk walking in there with a camera,  because of course they were going to be protective of their environment and culture,” says Tangaroa. She adds: “The compelling beauty of the Harlem environment revealed a side to a city that could be further explored through photographic documentation.”
It was a bit earlier that same Saturday afternoon bus ride on the M101 route to Harlem that inspired Tangaroa to photograph the famous predominantly black neighbourhood and exhibit those images at home in Rarotonga. That May 2009 exhibition, Tangaroa’s first in over a decade, is aptly named M101.
“The whole idea of having a photographic exhibition is drawing the comparisons between cosmopolitan city and a Pacific island environment – the values that different societies place on these environments and draw on those comparisons - these visual comparisons that were all around me.”

If Harlem is colourful and humorous; a neglected ghetto undergoing economic and social gentrification; sad, cheerful, puzzling, old, new, poor; Tangaroa has captured all that in her series of insightful and sensitive photographs.

Donald Stanley Marshall, Captive Camera - Curated by Rod Dixon, University of the South Pacific
Photography
Exhibition 23 August - 19 September,
Opening 22 August, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

Fifty years ago, the Harvard anthropologist Don Marshall set out to gather data for the Peabody Museum, using participant observation, interview, tape recording and photography to “capture” Cook Islanders and make them visible for closer scientific inspection and categorization. The information collected by Marshall- over 40 archive boxes of field materials and more than 3,000 images (with the original negatives) - has been generously gifted by his daughter Mira Nan Marshall to USP Cook Islands. Many of these photographs feature people and places in Rarotonga but most are of Mangaia, the primary focus (along with Ra’ivavae) of Don Marshall’s 1950’s fieldwork.

Andy Leleisi'uao, Areatures of the Arctaur People - BCA Artist in Residence
Paintings
Exhibition 24 September - 13 October
Opening 23 September, 6pm
BCA, Rarotonga

Leleisi'uao writes, ‘I was offered an opportunity to immerse myself in my work and I embraced it. With the freedom to explore, I discovered fresh iconography and urbane narratives with rampant discipline and inventiveness. The body of work created during the course of my stay is titled Areatures of the Arctaur People.’ Its origins permeate from my breakthrough exhibition at Whitespace art gallery in Auckland entitled Angipanis of the Abanimal People in April 2008. It was an exhibition which unravelled a world occupied with creatures tainted with moral and social ambiguity. It was a mixture of earlier and new iconography with constant dialogues of angst and hope. Areatures of the Arctaur People evolves this concept further and investigates the humanscape of individuality in society through a masquerade of enigmatic imagery.'