Te Puke ō Tara

It is an important part of our art practise to acknowledge & bring honour to those who whakapapa to the area we are working in. We use our artistic talent to support the work & effort of the community so this mural down the newly revamped walkway is our interpretation & tautoko regarding their history.

We have been working alongside the Otara Town Centre Management & CAB (Citizens Advice Bureau) to create a mural that educates those who walk past about the originas of the Town Centre name. It is about remembering the past to bring strength for the future - graphic interpretations of the sacred maunga (volcanic mountains) of the Ngāi Tai Iwi & of their Rangatira (Tara te Irirangi). We thank the people of Ngāi Tai, the Kaumatua who blessed the mural & the locals who supported this activation along with all of the staff involved. Auckland Council thank you for the funding we gained to complete this project & again thank you for the support & help of Ayr Jones who made this project happen. The meaning of this design will be situated in the front window of the CAB building at the end of this walkway for all to see, understanding the history & name of an area brings life & colour to the ground we walk over each day unaware of the rich history & beauty that lies in its foundations.

Door 1: Te Puke ō Tara (Smales Mount)

Door 2: Mātanginui (Greenmount)

Door 3: Te Puke Ariki Nui (Highbrook)

ō Tara (of Tara) - the correct spelling of the now known 'Otara'

Pūtangitangi Park

Our Kingsland Pūtangitangi Ducks mural (Cabbage Tree Swamp) has been transformed into an urban space which connects to a second area on the other side of the Alsco driveway. An Urbanlogic project (its not actually called Pūtangitangi Park but it sounded cool lol), we painted the mural in January this year & Unitec Design students were given the opportunity to enter a competition designing this unique space & creating a functional, usable area that was once an unused roadside area. It was great to attend the official opening today & to see that the mural has been untouched & still flying well. Yay for Aucklanders thinking out of the box & for companies like this who say yes to innovative & creative projects that blur the line between industrial & residential spacial interaction :)

What footprint will you leave behind?

We facilitated a workshop for the YMCA Rise Up Leadership Project (thanks to Adam the guru there) over the weekend. Community interaction & doing life together alongside our 4 babies is what we do - its about others & its about the next generation. Sure we love painting, creativity, producing great art work, but we are also just as interested in passing on our skills so that those who follow our footsteps will take those ideas & run further & faster than we ever had or will. Life can get so consuming, all about what we can do & achieve for ourselves, but what does that say? Do the people around us feel involved, valuable, worth our time, or are they just buyers, admirers, people who are there to consume what we produce but never grow in relationship with us & find out who we are behind the colours & canvas.

It is always a privilege to share our life journey & passions with others, it is particularly rewarding when those moments involve our own children who get to see us stepping out to follow our dreams/passions while many around us say its not going to work being full time artists'. We need to leave a footprint on this world, an impression that we were here & we mattered, the workshop was about those ideas & each of the students painted custom cut mdf sneakers to give an urban context to their story.