We are currently in Bora Bora painting at the middle point of our trip to the Ono’ street art festival. Traveling to Raiatea, Bora Bora & Moorea we are painting alongside a crew of amazing artists from around the globe. Head to the official social media pages to check out the journey so far!
We had the privilege of attending a 4 day festival in the city of Lens, France alongside a group of international artists. The local council initiative to bring vitality & colour to their town was an effort to battle some of the issues that result from the closure of large mine companies resulting in a 70% unemployment rate in the area.
Understanding the impact of art & the effects it has on humans they prepared large canvases under bridges and on public walls & gave the artists involved the opportunity to work in their personal styles & to paint works that reflected our responses. A mixture of graffiti letters & character work appeared over the next few days & resulted in a huge shift in the emotion of the town & the public responses were great.
We then traveled to Paris for 7 days to take in the sights, to immerse ourselves into the arts culture & took away so much inspiration. Painting with local artists we completed some work at the l’aeresol painting park & met gallery owners & collectors at some amazing spaces. A huge thanks to Bertrandz for inviting us, to our photographer friend Fabe Collage for having us stay a few days & always to our babysitters & family who hold the fort at home. Paris stole our heart that’s for sure & we can’t wait to return!
#Edconvo18 was a 2 day summit at the ANZ Viaduct Events Centre in Auckland CBD facilitated by the Ministry of Education. Over 2 days ministers, educators & those who were invited came to have conversations about the next 30 years of our NZ education system & what needs to change.
We had the honour of working alongside 5 other amazing artists painting pou that hung from the ceiling. Each of us responded to the conversations & thoughts surrounding us, they were our visual statements to the 700 people who attended & our response to change.
Tracey Tawhiao, Charlotte Graham, Natasha Keating, Andrew McCleod, Otis Frizzel and ourselves all worked over 10 hours to produce our 6 pou & at the end they were raised up into the ceiling as everyone listened to their meanings. Thank you to the organisers for the invitation, we had the opportunity to bring our babies over the 2 days and show them what we do (while they ate all the catering haha). It was super special to have our mum attend on Mother’s Day and also have the Prime Minister Jacinda Adern attend. Our pou was a response to the 3 kite of knowledge in particular the arts and crafts. The colour palette was inspired by our last project at Papakura High School and our connection to educational responses using the arts.
Education is key & creative approaches are essential in the formation of our curriculums as a nation!