On purpose
Vivid, bold and playful, Paul Darragh’s artwork brings all the drama.
Vivid, bold and playful, Paul Darragh’s artwork brings all the drama.
Words Hayley Barnett
Having worked on projects for Rihanna, Nike, IBM and The New York Times, Mount Maunganui artist Paul Darragh knows a thing or two about pop culture. When he moved home from the bright lights of New York City, where he had established his own design studio and gallery space (Manhattan Born), he knew he wanted to “strip back the BS” and focus on getting to the bottom of who he really is. Each painting, he says, gets him a little closer to that place.
UNO: How did you become an artist?
Paul: I believe you are born an artist, and you can try and ignore those tendencies, but eventually they must come out in order to fulfil your life’s destiny and purpose. As a teenager, I loved art and graphic design, but decided to pursue the latter professionally. I worked as a graphic designer first in Melbourne for four years, then in New York City for 10 years. It was at the end of this period, after working with some top brands and experiences, that I realised I was no longer creatively fulfilled just doing that work. I needed to also create art. So I remember that day in 2015, at my job in Brooklyn, deciding from then on I would become an artist.
How did you discover this medium?
My art practice is distinctly influenced by my design career; the work is flat, graphic and bold. However, I have always been influenced by artists that work in this style. When I discovered Andy Warhol as a teenager, his work really resonated with me, and so began a love of paintings that have a strong sense of composition and colour with a nod to commerce and pop culture. These things all interest me, it’s what I think about, and it’s who I am. I believe my art should reflect the contemporary world around me, through my visual language of colour and composition.
What do you love about it?
I love that I am in complete control when I create an exhibition or collection of paintings. I have no boss or subordinates to consider. I have no one to bounce ideas off of. I only have my own mind and a belief in myself. It’s very raw and it can be very cathartic. Creating is very much a journey. You start with nothing and you have to make thousands of decisions to arrive at this final image and it often doesn’t come easy, nor does it end up like the image in your mind's eye. But therein lies the magic.
Why did you move to the Mount?
When I moved home from New York I didn’t really know where in Aotearoa I wanted to live. I decided I would move home to my parents’ farm outside of Matamata and figure it out from there. I ended up staying there for a couple of years before meeting my now-partner Ali, who lives and has a business at the Mount. We had been together for seven months when the pandemic hit in 2020, so I moved over when the lockdown started. Three years later, I’m still here, and the Mount is now my home.
What inspires you to create?
I have a theory that each person is born with a pure soul that is the representation of their unique identity and spirit. Over time, this gets whittled away as we learn how to navigate life. We pick up insecurities and bruises. We feel shame and hide parts of ourselves. We let in resentment and bitterness. When I paint, I am trying to achieve that purity again.
What is your favourite piece and why?
One of my favourite pieces is from my latest show “Shape Up or Ship Out” at Tauranga Art Gallery. It is called Precious Cargo. I love it because it’s really big, really simple and really bright. It has an optical illusion to it. It could be a jewel, it could be a container or it could be a button from a 1980s game. You could be viewing it from above, or in front or inside of it, so it has the ability to distort space and perspective.
Who is your favourite artist right now?
One of my favourite artists right now is Ad Minoliti. They are a non-binary artist from Argentina. They make incredible geometric abstraction and installations. There are also a lot of references to children’s illustration. The paintings are bright and fun and filled with joy.
Why art matters
Bringing Māori art to the mainstream is a personal and professional passion for Julie Paama-Pengelly.
Bringing Māori art to the mainstream is a personal and professional passion for Julie Paama-Pengelly.
Words Monique Balvert-O’Connor / Photos Salina Galvan
Julie Paama-Pengelly is unsure why UNO finds her story-worthy. Where to start? How about the fact she’s described as a formidable powerhouse artist, curator and strategist doing amazing work.
She heads Te Tuhi Mareikura Trust – known for exceptional work nurturing and celebrating Māori creativity at all levels. The Trust was the driving force behind the inaugural Tauranga Moana Creatives’ Awards, introduced this year and held to align with the country’s first national Matariki holiday.
She’s one of Aotearoa’s foremost wāhine Māori tā moko practitioners – she owns Mount Maunganui’s Art and
Body studio, has practiced ta moko for 30 years and was an initiator of the recent world indigenous tattoo festival, named Toi Kiri.
And Julie is heavily involved in digitally promoting the work of Māori artists.
Of Ngāi Te Rangi heritage, Julie (whose whakapapa is Matakana) works closely with the commissioners, appointed to Tauranga, on a soon-to-be-released arts strategy.
She says, “You can’t do everything.” But it appears she’s giving it a go, fuelled by a desire to create an art space for Māori.
“I have immersed myself in what the Māori world means. I want to leave a better place. I understand what art means to our people and know that’s what to concentrate on to make a difference.”
When not heavily immersed in all of the above, Julie does… Art. Of topical interest, she has a proposal lodged for a solo exhibition at Tauranga Art Gallery. Plans are for that artwork to then travel to Vancouver in 2024. Julie trained in Māori visual arts painting and sculpture (she also has a Masters in Third World Development). Bringing art to the fore
Julie says chairing Te Tuhi Mareikura Trust “is a passion and a privilege”. The Trust advocates and leads education initiatives for artists and audiences and is dedicated to increasing opportunities for Māori visual stories to feature prominently. A five-year-goal is to create a Tauranga Moana Māori arts exhibition centre as a focal point for its artists.
“Our vision is to lead development, and give leadership, in the Tauranga Moana art space. That traverses some difficult conversations, like traditional versus contemporary, where Māori should be in the economy, who should be represented when it comes to Māori.
“It is really important for our commissioners to understand there is a shortfall in what is being presented as Māori art – we are lauded overseas, but not here.”
The Trust ensures the Māori voice will be heard in the pending Tauranga City Council Art Strategy.
“We have our own Toi (art) strategy because of the Trust, and we are developing a legacy plan.”
Julie firmly believes Aotearoa’s leverage as a nation is its Māori culture (as well as landscape).
“We hold this as our own. We want to back this up with real development for Māori.”
The Trust includes a youth programme, Toi Ohooho (“be alive through arts”), launched a year ago. Not just for Māori, it helps at-risk youth aged 13 to 24, supporting them through art. They are mentored by established artists and involved in projects that explore their identity within their historic landscape.
Tauranga City Council arts and culture manager James Wilson is full of praise for the way Te Tuhi Mareikura Trust is working to raise the profile of the many “amazing” tangata whenua artists and applauds efforts being made to connect their work to new audiences.
Julie’s work, he praises as grounded in traditional Ngā Toi Māori practices, yet contemporary and cutting edge, and always focused on carving out a new space in which artists can share their stories.
“The creative life force of Tauranga is strong, and Te Tuhi Mareikura Trust enables the community to tune into this life force, and to discover why arts and culture is such an important part of who we are as people,” he says.
Art at a click
Tauranga may not yet have a Māori arts exhibition centre, but the opportunity for artists to showcase and sell their work has expanded thanks to a Digital Cluster Initiative Julie is involved in. Going digital enables Tauranga Moana Māori artists to reach far beyond local, and into new markets online.
“Through digital, we (Te Tuhi Mareikura Trust and the Digital Cluster Initiative) will support collaboration and growth, work to lift productivity, enhance discoverability, and explore new direct-to-consumer markets online. “It is all part of the larger legacy project to cement Māori arts in the region,” an excited Julie tells.
Awards and accolades
Te Tuhi Mareikura Trust teams up with key locals in the art space (for example, Sonya Korohina and Para Whati) to set aspirations. Honouring artists (with tribal connectivity to the Bay) for their achievement in Māori art is a result of such collaboration, and so the Matariki Awards were born this year. “It was a hit, a beautiful thing,” says Julie who was the event organiser. The awards include Tauranga City Council sponsorship and are here to stay. Inaugural winners included film producer Chelsea Winstanley and musician Stan Walker.
Ancestral stories, meaningful tradition
Julie calls the Toi Kiri Festival her baby. Te Tuhi Mareikura Trust hosted the festival this year for the third time. It’s essentially a world tattoo event involving leading indigenous practitioners who gather to share learnings and art. An underlying theme is the revival of the tattoo tradition. That’s hugely significant to Julie.
“One of the reasons I got involved in Ta Moko was because it’s a language – it tells a personal story and is a connection to our ancestors, to cosmology, to our youth. A lot of that has been lost for a lot of Māori. For every art form that disappears, there goes a way of being, a way of communicating, a whole body of knowledge.”
Upon reflection, Julie concedes much of note has happened as regards her shared aspirations for Māori within the region and within the new civic vision. It’s been timely to talk.
Award-winning Israel Randell talks art, new challenges and the bigger picture
“If people ask me [to explain my work], I want to have a conversation. That’s really all art is, a conversation. Sometimes it’s real honest, like, ‘What the hell is that?’ or ‘Why do I hate this work so much?’” That’s the kind of things that artwork brings.”
Through multi-media, moving image and sound, award-winning Tauranga artist Israel Randell articulates the spiritual and unseen. Now, in her new role as curator at Whakatāne Museum & Arts, she wants to help amplify the voices of local talent.
WORDS Maria Hoyle PHOTOS Quinn O’Connell
The question ‘what is art?’ is a tricky one to answer. One person’s masterpiece may be another’s monstrosity, making it hard to reach a consensus. Yet for multi-disciplinary artist Israel Randell, it’s not complicated at all. Art, she says, is a conversation, and as a newly appointed exhibitions curator at Whakatāne Museum & Arts, it’s one she is very much looking forward to having with the local community.
Originally from Hamilton (Tainui, Ngāti Kahungunu) and of Cook Islands descent, the mum-of-one has her work cut out for her when she arrives at her post (the week after talking to UNO). She and the team will be busy preparing for the February exhibition of the winners of the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award: Painting & Drawing, presented by Arts Whakatāne and held at Te Kōputu a te Whanga a Toi – Whakatāne Library & Exhibition Centre. Although that will be Israel’s immediate focus, she talks excitedly about the bigger picture.
“I’m really interested in being embedded in the community, getting to know the artists, and finding out how I can help them to realise their ambitions and be that person who bridges the community and the gallery,” says the Toi Ohomai Bachelor of Creative Industries graduate. “I’m also excited to be learning from my colleagues. Going into any new role, it’s good to be listening.”
Listening will be crucial for her dialogue with local artists too. Some may not see the gallery space as relevant to them – for example, those who may be more focused on selling their work, or those from other disciplines such as dance, theatre or acting.
Is it fair to say that galleries are often seen as no-go zones for certain sections of the community? “Yes,” she says decisively. “A gallery space is definitely always viewed as a white space by people outside looking in.”
So breaking down the boundaries between practices is one way not only to showcase a wider variety of work, but also to change the perception of what and who a gallery is for, of reaching those who aren’t, for whatever reason, engaging with it. “It’s constructive to help different types of creatives,” says Israel. “I think it does start with having a structure that caters to every kind of practice, not just the 2D practice or sculptural practice.”
Israel’s no stranger to having a dialogue across disciplines and amplifying the voices of indigenous artists. She arrives in her new role fresh from a Mana Moana research residency with arts agency Circuit, where she looked at the experimental practices of Māori and Pasifika visual artists, writers, choreographers and musicians to produce a collection of interviews and online content.
Israel’s own work experiments with moving image, multi-media and sound – quite a departure from the large-scale paintings she did as an art student in Auckland. “I took a break, moved to Tauranga and started off again at Toi Ohomai. But I didn’t want my work to be flat on the wall anymore – I wanted to occupy the space between the walls. I wanted to paint with light in space, so I was looking for materials that would let me do that. Lots of painters say all painting is about light and dark. I was interested in using light in a sculptural way to activate space.”
She originally considered working in neon, but it was costly. A classmate suggested wire would be cheaper, so she sourced some on Trade Me and started experimenting with it in the school studio.
Playing with wire and light sounds like a lot of fun, but it was no walk in the park. Israel’s daughter Lola, now two and a half, was just eight months old when Israel started the course. “I was still breastfeeding so I was worried. But I needed something else, a direction or passion, that was separate from my identity as a mother. I needed that for my own mental health and that in turn made me a better mother.”
It also, she believes, made her a better artist. “You go in there with no bullshit, no excuses – you get things done. You don’t have time to fluff around, then go home and work till 2am, because at home it’s all about your child. So I was way more focused. I think that drive elevated my art practice to something it maybe couldn’t have been when I was a single person.”
“I didn’t want my work to be flat on the wall anymore – I wanted to occupy the space between the walls.”
That ‘elevated something’ is a compelling body of work that speaks clearly to ‘maatauranga’ – what she describes as “the whole way of being Māori, the many layers that there are.
“I look a lot to cosmological narratives to explore things that aren’t material,” she says. “I’m interested in actualising the intangible. It’s hard… I don’t know if I’m successful half the time. This year’s body of work has focused on water and the elemental phases it goes through, and the spiritual things they hold for Māori and Pasifika people. I’m interested in exploring things that I can’t see that have been told by generations of elders, and trying to connect with it and make sense of it in my own way.”
Israel might not know if she’s successful half the time, but her work certainly impressed the judges of the 2020 Miles Art Award, presented In March by the Tauranga Art Gallery Toi Tauranga. To her surprise, she landed the Supreme Award for Wahi Ngaro, a compelling installation in which triangles of electroluminescent wire reference whakapapa and an in-between space with infinite potential. It’s a beautiful piece, one you can appreciate without knowing what it represents. Does it bother her when she’s asked to explain her work?
“If people do ask me, I want to have a conversation,” she says. “That’s really all art is, a conversation. The artwork is there to trigger that. Sometimes it’s real honest conversations, like, ‘What the hell is that?’ or ‘Why do I hate this work so much?’” That’s the kind of things that artwork brings.”
And then sometimes the work exists, well, just because. “Sometimes we totally make it because we want to make it. It’s important to let people know that and uncomplicate the way we speak.”
Featured in UNO Issue #51 - subscribe to get yours
Taaniko: the woman behind the mural
If you’ve driven down Totara Street recently, chances are you’ve seen it. A young Māori woman’s striking features, painted by famous Irish street artist Fin DAC, embellish a 7-metre-high wall in what has become one of The Mount’s most recognisable murals.
WORDS Laura McCleannan PHOTOS Tracie Heasman
If you’ve driven down Totara Street recently, chances are you’ve seen it. A young Māori woman’s striking features, painted by famous Irish street artist Fin DAC, embellish a 7-metre-high wall in what has become one of The Mount’s most recognisable murals. Her hair is wild, her stance strong, and her eyes are a clever reflection of Mauao in the distance (if you look close enough). Her name is Taaniko Nordstrom. She’s the model, artist, and entrepreneur behind Soldiers Rd Portraits – a unique Māori portraiture business that Taaniko runs with her sister-in-law, Vienna, in Cambridge.
“People don’t realise it’s me, until they see me wear the moko,” Taaniko explains during our photoshoot. Seeing the two faces side by side, however, it’s clear Fin is one helluva talented artist. He first flew to New Zealand in 2015, in search of a muse for the Mount Maunganui Street Art Festival. “His usual aesthetic is Asian women,” Taaniko says, “but he wanted to paint someone indigenous. He googled ‘Māori woman portrait’, and my face came up. I said yes straight away because I knew it would be a statement – a Māori woman with a moko in the middle of The Mount? How cool!
“Fin didn’t know anything about the Māori culture, be he wanted to learn. So when he started to paint the mural, I came to Waiata Tautoko, and sang for him. I told him this is how we show support in our culture, and he was blown away. After getting to know me a bit better, Fin felt like my hair needed to be wilder, so he went back and changed it. We really vibed as artists.”
While Fin was painting her, Taaniko was trying to keep up with her own portraiture business, which was exploding in New Zealand as well as internationally. “I’m the typical Kiwi entrepreneur story – I got back from travelling in 2013 and was dirt broke. Mum is an artist so we always had portraits of native American chiefs on the wall. But it wasn’t until I saw the original photos of these chiefs (at the Smithsonian in New York) that I started thinking about photos of Māori leaders. I wanted to bring them to life in some way.
“When I got home I went to the op shop and asked mum to help me whip up some old-school korowai (cloaks), piupiu (skirts) and collars. I got dressed, went into the shed, drew a moko on myself, and took a photo on my iPad. I aged the photo with a filter and chucked it on Facebook. Almost immediately I had people asking where I had the photo taken and how much it cost. I was like, what? People would pay for this?!
“I called Vienna and told her to bring her camera to the Kawhia Kai Festival. She’d never done a portrait before – she’s a landscape photographer. But she loved the idea, so we packed up a big suitcase of props and an old broken gazebo, and set up a stall. It was completely hotchpotch – our backdrop was a duvet cover from the Sallies in Cambridge. We did over 40 portraits that day, and two days later we rocked up at the South Auckland market and did another 50 portraits. The rest is history.”
“We’ve moko’d up kids in a New York subway, a barber shop in Brooklyn, and couples under the Eiffel Tower. We got a lot of attention quite quickly because no one does what we do.”
In true laid-back kiwi style, Taaniko didn’t even organise market stalls – they just turned up and sweet-talked their way in. I suppose tenacity is a given with six older brothers. “My family have always encouraged me to be proud of my culture and to think outside the square. In fact, the name Soldiers Rd was inspired by memories of travelling to The Mount from Cambridge as a child. Whenever we’d pass Soldiers Rd at the bottom of the Kaimais, Mum would ask us what we thought the name meant. I thought it represented someone’s story, or their journey through life. When we first started editing our portraits, all of the eyes looked so defiant. Immediately I thought of Soldiers Rd, and the name stuck.”
From homeless men on the street to the Duchess of Austria on her private yacht, Taaniko’s shot thousands of people, and her work has taken her across the globe. “We ran Soldiers Rd from Papamoa for a year and have a studio in Cambridge, but our whole business packs into two bags, so we’re always travelling. We’ve moko’d up kids in a New York subway, a barber shop in Brooklyn, and couples under the Eiffel Tower. We got a lot of attention quite quickly because no one does what we do – no one had taken moko off kapa haka stages and used it in a completely different space.” So, what’s the Soldiers Rd experience like? “It’s authentic,” Taaniko explains, “but it’s also a modern take, because we shoot all nationalities. Whether you’re brown, white, yellow or green, the first thing we do is whakawhanaungatanga – we talk about where we’re from and establish a relationship. I start styling as soon as people walk in the door. But this connection sets the vibe for the day, and that's the most important part. If I can’t connect with the person and make them feel proud of who they are, their eyes will look dead in the photo. I have half an hour to mould a mind and create a story. The fastest part is taking the photo!” She’s not a trained makeup artist or hairstylist, but Taaniko credits her love of fashion and time as a flight attendant for her beauty and styling skills. “We dress clients, style their hair and use a stencil to do a temporary moko. The stencils have been blessed for the purpose of reuse. All of our props are from op shops or old theatres. I chop them up and use big clips from Bunnings to keep clothing in place.”
Taaniko is proudly contributing to a resurgence of Māori culture in New Zealand. If you haven’t seen her on Totara Street yet, look up next time you drive away from The Mount. “Twenty years ago, it wasn’t possible to have a job that paid me to inspire Māori and non-Māori through Māori culture. I’m so excited to think that my kids will grow up surrounded by Kiwis with a connection to our important culture. Everyone has a legacy and a story, and my favourite thing about Soldiers Rd is that I get to visually capture it for people.”