Public Seminar: Taarati Taiaroa - Tell them I said …

THURS 20 MAY, 12.00 – 1.00 PM, P152, DUNEDIN SCHOOL OF ART, RIEGO STREET, DUNEDIN  
 

Taarati Taiaroa

Tell them I said …

Taarati Taiaroa (Ng¯ati T¯uwharetoa, Ng¯ati Apa, Te ¯Ati Awa, Ng¯ati Kotimana) is an independent cultural worker whose work over the past 10 years has focused on the ethics of curatorial, artist-initiated, community based and collaborative practice. 

As a participant in the Emerging Curators Programme (2015-16) she articulated a manifesto for her “conversational research” approach to working with others that is process driven and resists pre-determined outcomes. In this seminar she will discuss “conversational research” as enacted in artistic collaborations and curatorial projects. In doing so, she will reflect on the process that led her to understand and articulate her own ethics and the impact of this on decision making within her practice, and ultimately what she has been working on as the Blue Oyster Summer Resident. 

The title of this seminar references the 2016 collection of essays by Martin Herbert, Tell Them I Said No, in which he considers various artists’ withdrawal from the art world or their open antagonisms to its machinations.

A graduate of the University of Auckland, Taarati Taiaroa holds Masters degrees in both Fine Arts and Museums and Cultural Heritage. As a co-director of RM, an artist-run-space in central Auckland, she contributed to the facilitation, production and coordination of over 50 exhibitions and events. In 2019 she co-convened the ST PAUL St Curatorial Symposium, It's as if we were made for each other; was a guest faculty member on the ICI for the Curatorial Intensive Auckland at Artspace and was Artist-in-residence at the Centre of Action Research and Evaluation at Massey University, Palmerston North.

In 2020 she was Assistant Curator, M¯aori Art on the exhibition Toi T¯u Toi Ora: Contemporary M¯aori Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T¯amaki. In this role, Taarati was able to put to use her MA thesis which sought to write a history of Maori art exhibitions (1958-2013). It focused on the group exhibition as a formative form in the reception, kaupapa and strengthening of a contemporary M¯aori art voice. She was supported to complete this thesis by the Marsden Funded Toi te Mana project, lead by Dr. Deidre Brown, Dr, Ngarino Ellis and the late Prof. Jonathan Mane Wheoki. Since 2013 she has been sharing her research through symposium papers, exhibitions, public programmes, and publications. Recent written contributions can be found in Crafting Aotearoa (2019) and the latest edition of Toi o T¯amaki’s magazine Art Toi (Dec 2020).