| 2012 Exhibitions |
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21 - 26 Feburary
28 Feburary- 19 March
New Zealand/Samoan artist Nanette Lela’ulu features strongly with BCA in 2012. Lela’ulu’s first exhibition, Unsung song reunites a series of large portraits originally shown as part of a broader exhibition In the house of my heart (2010). The portraits are re-presented as a stand-alone exhibition to deliver a compelling experience of contemporary, pacific based characters. This show serves as a preview to a larger portrait show that will open @ BCA in late April. The artists return to portraiture signals a passionate revitalization of her earlier work and themes. In December 2012/January 2013, Lela’ulu features 40 small, intriguingly detailed island landscapes. Following on from her sell out exhibition ‘Snapshots from the back of my bike’(BCA, 2011), the artist advances her study of a decaying pacific culture and its inevitable transition in a modern environment.
8-11 March BCA Gallery @ The VOLTA Show,
Of Cook Islands, Tahitian and Samoan descent, Michel Tuffery is based in Wellington, New Zealand and is represented by BCA Gallery. Renowned as a printmaker, painter, sculptor & digital/ performance artist, Tuffery exhibits worldwide and in 2008, became the youngest recipient of a member of the New Zealand Merit of Order (M.N.Z.M) in the Queen's Honour's list for service to the arts. Tuffery delivers a contemporary Polynesian viewpoint as he questions this epic period in human discovery, utilising material recorded by scientists and artists from the three voyages of the English navigator Captain James Cook to the South Pacific during the 18th century. This period in history was to be as significant to the people of the Pacific as it was to the populous of Europe. Tuffery delves within the mindset of the historical characters involved, including, the perception of artwork executed by the renowned Polynesian navigator Tupaia aboard Cook’s first voyage (1768-71). Tupaia learned to work in watercolour, potentially the first Polynesian to do so. Also central to Tuffery’s exploration is the historical figure Mai, the first Polynesian to travel to England. The impact of Mai’s visit to eighteenth century London was enormous. Tuffery investigates how both of these Polynesian personalities influenced the (then) contemporary psyche of Western culture and provides renewed perspective to the inevitable interaction of divergent ideologies. Captain Cook himself is another captivating figure in Tuffery’s series. He has painted Cook with various markers of pacific identity, a pacific tattoo, a frangipani flower, a hibiscus flower and a dog skin cloak – to illustrate how Cook’s identity was affected by his personal contact with pacific islanders. On his third voyage (1776-79), Cook brought bulls, horses and sheep, animals that had never been seen before in Polynesia. Their arrival caused a sensation and for the artist serve as a contemporary metaphor for the introduction of ‘imported food’ that would forever alter the traditional diet & lifestyle of pacific islanders. Large and small 3 D bull sculptures (made from corned beef tins) are a re-occurring theme in this artists work, Tuffery once remarking ‘as soon as they (the bulls) arrived, everything changed’. Positioning himself within the continuum of historical interaction, Tuffery’s work reflects the intricacy of fundamental discovery in human ‘first contact’.
1 - 18 May Evolving from the exhibition Unsung Song, RESPECT elevates Lela'ulu's realist portraiture to a new level, the artist saturating her chosen 'sitters' with provocative iconography and purpose. In a somewhat 'gloves off' approach, Lela'ulu's subjects (all of whom are activley involved in the pacific contemporary art world), are set amongst symbols of love, stature, death, rage, sexuality and racisim. Six, large format portraits will be revealed in this exhibition.
It is impossible to escape the mesmeric qualities of Sylvia Marsters flower paintings. Brilliant colour and realism demand your attention, the composition of the artist’s flower works designed to draw you into a powerful space filled with a wealth of sensation. There is a history and backstory to Sylvia Marsters that renders the passion in her works translatable. Born in New Zealand, to a Cook Islands (Aitutaki), father and Kiwi mother, Marsters grew up in Otara, attending a Seventh Day Adventist school in Mangere. Obsessed with drawing from a young age, she once described her school art classes as "inadequate", with the prospect of a career in the arts an unlikely course of events. "When I left school I worked in a clothing factory as a machinist, it was so boring" Marsters stated in an interview with the New Zealand Herald. Evening art classes, including painting sessions with veteran artist Lois McIvor invigorated Marsters resolve. Captivated by her perceptions of the Cook Islands, Marsters renowned flower works first emerged in 2000, the art works bold arrangements defined by a personal longing to experience her heritage. This is in stark contrast to the "Kiwi-ized sub-culture of her parents, her father having left Aitutaki in 1952. “A lot of his generation didn't want to know about their culture when they got here," Marsters states. “Church became the most important thing and they never talked about their culture. Now the next generation is reviving it." Marsters dream was realized in 2003, when she was awarded the Creative New Zealand Artist in Residence to Rarotonga. For Marsters, her ‘return’ was a universal moment in her personal and artistic journey. The exhibitions O’ora Te Moenga with BCA Gallery and Te Ruperupe O Toku Ipukarea with the Cook Islands National Museum resulted, the artists’ new series of works absorbing her surroundings and taking on an authorative new dimension. Cook Islands artist Ian George wrote at the time “The work is bright and realistic and monumental.” This is a realm born of three elemental experience’s, the child of a contemporary New Zealand upbringing fused with the back-story of her father’s Eden-like origins ultimately confronting the pungent reality of Island life in the 21st century. It is an on-going experience, as the artist frequently returns to the Cook Islands. The flowers and foliage of her new reality burst forth from the canvas, Marsters attention to detail a signature of her work. 
19 June - 6 July Ewan Smith, managing director and founder of the Cook Islands domestic airline, Air Rarotonga presents a photographic essay of 21st century Polynesian life. A resident of Rarotonga for the past 40 years, Smith's analysis is delivered through images of modern sea-faring Vaka - traditionally inspired, ocean going, double hulled canoes, Ura - Cook Islands cultural dancing and Ekalesia - iconic limestone churchs constructed in the nineteenth century. Smith's photographic book, 'The Cook Islands' was released in 1998 with a second, revised edition released in 2011.
2-27 July
Michel Tuffery’s Artist in Residence at BCA will see him document and respond to the architectural qualities of the historical churches and buildings that exist in and around Rarotonga. His intention is to give representation to the use of space by drawing a link between traditonal and contemporary structures and how architecture has entrenched itself onto the landscape while looking at human indicators and how we engage within and around these structures. Michel will realise this new suite of artworks through utilsing a range of mediums for exhibition at BCA at the close of the residency.
14-31 August
4 -21 September
Early in his career, Leleisi’uao, born in New Zealand of Samoan heritage, was profoundly affected by the treatment of Polynesian migrants within New Zealand society, particularly the infamous dawn raids that specifically targeted the Samoan community of Auckland. His highly eruptive style of painting at the time soon morphed into his renowned, intricately detailed series of ‘ufological’ paintings upon which his new works are partially based. Actively exhibiting in Auckland, Dunedin, Christchurch, Rarotonga and New York over the past four years, Leleisi’uao’s excitingly animated style of painting is evolving at a rapid pace. The artists well recognized ‘creature-scapes’ are occupied by a morphing, new entity- part alien, part human and part animal. Possessing a new consciousness free of the traditional human paradox, Leleisi’uao’s alternative realms are populated by genesis beings with a new language and an idealistic culture, part faux mythology, part sci-fi – a secular, kaleidoscopic experience.
9-26 October
In a new series of works on transparent acrylic sheet, Reynolds’ on-going exploration of contemporary Rarotongan cultural values incorporates new motifs with an innovative visual presentation. Painting with a reflective surface, the artist essentially paints in reverse, leading in with the darkest colours and finishing with the lightest, immediate parallels wi th the William Wyatt Gill book ‘From Darkness to Light in Polynesia’ are drawn, however with the premise judiciously reversed. The traditional Rarotongan God Tangaroa remains front and centre along with developing Polynesian iconography. In Reynolds Solo exhibition In Tangaroa we Trust, (BCA , 2011) the artists humorous reference to the incongruous by-line of American identity, draws her viewers’ attention through a vortex of cultural veracity, the mirror like presentation of the works delivering a universe of past, present and future self-analysis. In 2012, Reynolds looks to advance her proposition, with adventurous new development in her work.
13-30 November
Following on from her 2011 exhibition Takeaways (BCA) Forbes environmental and social concerns continue to be shaped by her prescence in Rarotonga. New delivery media has been chosen for this show, uniquely befitting the artists Island environment.
December/January 2013
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