11 May - 14 July 2019
Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi
Edith Amituanai: Double Take is the first exhibition to survey artist Edith Amituanai’s practice in its entirety. Presenting over 60 photographs, it provides insights into the various bodies of work she has produced since 2003 which draw attention to the experiences of Pacific people as well as other diasporic communities both within New Zealand and further afield. Imaging people and domestic spaces in her immediate neighbourhood of Ranui in West Auckland and extending to Samoa, the USA and beyond, she provides a lens on what she describes as a ‘third-wave migration’ driven by diverse economic and social forces that propel the movement of Pacific Island communities from their homelands. Double Take invites us to reconsider these works for the critical insights they reveal of the artist’s use of and belief in the photographic medium. Suspended in place and time we see the inner and outer worlds of those pictured and, for a moment, envisage ourselves there.
Edith Amituanai was born in 1980 in Auckland, New Zealand. In 2005 she completed a Bachelor of Design (majoring in photography) at Unitec Institute of Technology, before completing a Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 2009. In 2007, Amituanai was the first recipient of the Art Foundation’s Marti Friendlander Photographic Award. The following year she was nominated for the Walters Prize at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Amituanai undertook the Taipei Artist Village Residencyin 2014 and was the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Hastings City Art Gallery in 2017. She has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums across Aotearoa and internationally in Australia, Austria, Taiwan, Germany and France. Her artwork is held in national collections including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Amituanai is represented by Anna Miles Gallery, Auckland.
Reviews
Ane Tonga awarded ‘Best Art Writing by New Zealand Maori or Pasifika for Edith Amituanai:Double Take, AAANZ.
Bridget Reweti, Double Take, Art + Australia.
Courtney Johnston, “The Room” and Ideas for Notre Dame’s Spire Replacement, Nine to Noon, Radio New Zealand.
Dominic Godrey, First Pacific woman to hold solo show at Adam Art Gallery, Radio New Zealand.
Hanahiva Rose, The Wider Village: Edith Amituanai at the Adam Art Gallery in Art New Zealand, Issue 171, Spring 2019.
Megan Dunn, Double Take: on Edith Amituanai, Photoforum.
Double Take Publication
Available HERE
•Softcover, 280mm x 220mm, 141 pages with colour illustrations
•Published 2019 by Adam Art Gallery at Victoria University of Wellington
•Editor: Christina Barton
•ISBN: 978-1-877309-43-4
Edith Amituanai: Double Take features a lead essay by Ane Tonga and further contributions by Anna Miles and Edith Amituanai, Christina Barton, Haruhiko Sameshima and Niko Besnier.