“Pōuliuli”
Léuli Eshraghi, Angela Tiatia, Anne Riley, Pati Tyrell, Sione Monū, Manu Vaea, Aata, Ripley Kavara and Suzanne Kite
7 Apr → 13 May 2017
PŌULIULI is a living Indigenous space featuring work by Indigenous artists and collectives based in Kulin Nation territory, Vasa Loloa (Great Ocean) and Turtle Island (North America): Angela Tiatia (Sāmoan), Anne Riley (Cree, Dené), Fafswag Collective members Pati Tyrell (Sāmoan), Sione Monu (Tongan) and Manu Vaea (Tongan), Aata (Tahitian), Ripley Kavara (Toaripi), Suzanne Kite (Oglala Lakota), and curator Léuli Eshraghi (Sāmoan, Persian).
A place to gather, deepen and engage with Indigenous knowledges, Pōuliuli positions audiences in this moment of return to Indigenous genders, sexualities and ceremonial-political practices. This is an accessible and culturally safe space held by Indigenous peoples who identify with many ways of being and knowing including Two-Spirit, trans, non-binary, queer, femme/feminine, and man/masculine.
Dark or deep night of potentiality in Sāmoan, PŌULIULI alludes to nocturnal ceremonial-political practices within vā, spaces of mutually beneficial relationships, providing ample space for Indigenous spoken, written, ritual and sensual languages to be activated.
Léuli Eshrāghi (Seumanutafa Sāmoan, Persian, Cantonese) intervenes in display territories to prioritize global Indigenous and Asian diasporic visuality, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonial-political practices.
Angela Tiatia is an artist living and working in Sydney, New South Wales, who works across performance, video and photography. Her practice is inflected by her Samoan heritage, and explores themes including gender, climate and colonialism. In much of her work, Tiatia has used her own body as the subject, creating endurance performances that articulate the dynamics of power on both a personal and macro scale.
Anne Riley
Pati Tyrell is a Sāmoan interdisciplinary visual artist with a strong focus on performance. Utilising lens-based media he creates visual outcomes that are centred around ideas of urban Pacific queer identity. He has shown work at Fresh Gallery Otara, PAH Homestead and most recently at the Pingyao International Photography Festival. Tyrell is a co-founder of the arts collective FAFSWAG. He is a recent graduate of the Bachelor of Creative Arts programme at the Manukau Institute of Technology, Otara. Pati is originally from Kirikiriroa, Waikato but is now based in Maungarei, Tāmaki Makaurau.
Sione Monū is an artist of the Tongan diaspora. They live between Canberra Australia and Auckland who works across the mediums of photography, moving-image, fashion and adornment, performance and drawing exploring identity, family and pasifika queer experience in the diaspora.
Manu Vaea is an interdisciplinary artist currently living in Tamaki Makaurau.
Aata
Ripley Kavara is a transdisciplinary practitioner with a deep grounding in musical forms destined to be liberatory. He believes in the power of music as a conduit for black queer spirituality and dedicates his time to coaxing the spirits to dance. Born in Papua New Guinea and living in so-called Melbourne, he embodies an artistic practice that is generative, community based and attuned to a sense of place where he creates on Wurundjeri Country. He has worked extensively as a musician, producer, DJ, educator, event organiser, youth worker, curator and project lead.
Suzanne Kite, aka Kite, is a Southern California-based, Oglala Lakota artist, performer and composer whose work includes electronic productions, arrangements for large ensembles, sound sculpture, installation, text scores, film scores, and video.