White Night at Mangere Arts Centre

Toioho ki Mangere features the work of Jacob Davey, Rongomaiaia Te Whaiti and Kristy Theobald, Bachelor of Māori Visual Arts candidates at Massey University's Te Pūtahi ā Toi in Palmerston North.

Working on the theme of mana tangata, the artists express their individual responses to contemporary issues including tino rangatiratanga, identity politics, hybridity and ethnicity. Their processes range from installation, to action painting, to transformation of fields of vision.

Also featured are works by Te Putahi a Toi staff Robert Jahnke, Rachael Rakena, Ngataiharuru Taepa, Israel Tangaroa Birch and the 2011 Artist in Residence Shane Cotton.

Fold by Bill Riley is a community-based work created around the ancient Japanese paper-folding art form known as origami.  Using pages from art magazines to create origami forms, Riley says "the work centres on the inherent value in art and related conservation and biodiversity issues".

Riley intends to extend this into a performance-based work where audience members are instructed on how to make the origami works, and can choose to contribute them to a larger work to be exhibited in Melbourne in July or to simply take them home with them.

Riley's thought is that the work could later be sold with the proceeds donated to a conservation group or gifted to a museum as a New Zealand-based community work.

12 March, 6:00pm - 10:30pm

Corner Bader Drive and Orley Avenue
facebook.com/mangereartscentre

Image credit: Jacob Davey, Ka Tangi Nga Manu, 2010