Opening in March, Le Folauga will showcase some of the best contemporary Pacific art to be seen in NZ for many years.

Opening in March, Le Folauga will showcase some of the best contemporary Pacific art to be seen in NZ for many years. The genesis of the show was a conversation in 2005 between artist Lonnie Hutchinson and curator Fuli Pereira, where they discussed creating an exhibition to run concurrently with Auckland Museum's planned historical exhibition Vaka Moana - Voyage of our Ancestors.

Image: Lonnie Hutchinson, Sista Girl 2004.The name, Le Folauga, was suggested by Johnny Penisula and encapsulates the idea of bringing the learned histories of the past with us into the future, as well as the notion of 'a flotilla moving together and forward'. The artists were invited to engage, re-interpret and re-contextualise items from the Pacific collection (featured in Vaka Moana) to give a reading and context for those traditional taonga from the homelands.

Curated by Fuli Pereira (Curator-Pacific at Auckland Museum) and Tautai trustee Ron Brownson (Senior Curator Auckland Art Gallery), Le Folauga is a partnership between the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust. The stunning line-up of exhibition participants present a representative sample of the best artwork created in Aotearoa by Pacific artists working across a wide variety of media: Michel Tuffery, Jim Vivieaere, Edith Amituanai, Fatu Feu'u, Steven Gwaliasi, Niki Hastings-McFall, Lonnie Hutchinson, John Ioane, Shigeyuki Kihara, Andy Leleisi'uao, Itiri Ngaro, Ani O'Neill, Johnny Penisula and Filipe Tohi. The artists, most of whom have created new work specifically for Le Folauga, have been specifically chosen in order to make a provocative and memorable public exhibition of Pacific contemporary visual. The exhibition is being shown in both the East and West Decorative Arts Galleries on the first floor of Auckland Museum.