The site of a failed resort development in the Cook Islands is the subject for Auckland-based artist Angela Tiatia's upcoming exhibition Neo-colonial Extracts. The exhibition opens on the 27 August at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Pakuranga.

Alluding to the potential pit-falls of the commercial tourist industry and foreign investment for the Pacific, Tiatia's haunting video work lingers over details of the failed Sheraton Resort in Vaimaanga, Rarotonga. The NZ$122 million resort development, with allegations of Italian Mafia involvement, was stalled during building in 1998 following the arrest of several key people involved. As guarantors, the Cook Island Government was almost financially crippled by the abandoned development - the balance totalling approximately half of the nation's debt. The site still sits in limbo as a succession of developers have tried to re-launch the project.

Tiatia brings the current reality of the abandoned resort into slow focus, depicting incomplete luxury chalets overcome by vegetation, derelict concrete shells on an island paradise. Accompanying the video are pieces of  framed ephemera found abandoned on site which provide glimpses into the financial back-story, including purchase agreements, bank statements and architectural plans.

Curator Bruce E. Phillips says, "Angela Tiatia's documentation quietly draws attention to the harsh reality of the abandoned resort. In contrast to tourist images of an island paradise, Tiatia reveals a Rarotonga physically and economically scarred. The exhibition stands as a powerful emotive memorial to the effects of globalisation on a developing island nation."

Raised between Auckland and Samoa, Tiatia, who has a Bachelor of Commerce, is concerned for the increasing commercialisation of the Pacific, describing multi-national corporations and developers as the new colonials. "These developments will produce generations of cleaners, maids, gardeners, rather than empowering the people."

Angela Tiatia has been working as an artist since the late 1990s and recently graduated from AUT with a Bachelor of Visual Arts. She is widely recognised as a presenter for TVNZ show Tagata Pasifika, as well as for her work as a model and actor.

Neo-colonial Extracts runs 27 August to 6 November in the Te Tuhi Project Space. It will be one of two exhibitions running through September for this emerging artist, with Tiatia's exhibition Foreign Objects also showing at Fresh Gallery Otara from 9 September - 1 October.

The opening event for Neo-colonial Extracts will be 2pm on Saturday 27 August. All welcome.

ENDS

For more information contact:

Helen Goudge

helen@tetuhi.org.nz

Ph (09) 577 0138

www.tetuhi.org.nz