Go to Jonathan Smart Gallery
Tokelaufeletoa Rangitoto, 2023, 4100 x 3030mm
The mono is a small patch on tapa. It covers holes, tears and remarries seams.
Mono is also the title of Kuliemoe’anga Stone Maka’s new show. Three big tapa alongside new smoke and spiderweb paintings make the show.
Jonathan Smart says of the works:
“The tapa are prepared by Stone’s sisters in Tonga, then sent south to Otautahi/Christchurch, where Stone goes to work upon them with his distinctive mix of red clay, dyes, indian ink, charcoal and oil paint.
Each tapa is covered in mono. And Stone riffs upon this by applying many more mono. His however, is a process of willful collage. Cut small, coloured and applied in patterns, I’m reminded of early modernist collages by Braque and others. The visual tradition of Tongan tapa is more abstract than that of Fiji, Rarotonga or Niue. And Maka’s work certainly continues this tradition. His vocabulary of circles, diamonds and bold blocks of colour including plenty of black is a powerful blend of Pacifica and western visual cultures – a language both contemporary and hybrid, in which Maka is now wonderfully proficient and provocative.
Maka’s paintings are also increasingly assured. The naturally feathered and flickering smoke forms are now brushed a little. Different intricate networks of spiderweb, including tunnel web are being explored. And oil paint in varying thicknesses via palette-knife is being utilized. So a variety of textures, density of mark-making and gentle asymmetries of composition are put before us.
The feeling can be celestial – the pleasure tantalizing.”
The exhibition runs until May 23.