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From the studio to the streets
Michel Tufferry (sitting) with one of his creations.
THE MAORI artist from New Zealand, Michel Tufferry, works with a special focus on contemporary issues. His art has no narrative and formality. He calls it a "reaction to space". At the Khoj workshop, Michel created a work of art around bulls and cows, which he borrowed from a local farmer. He dressed himself up as the local people do. "The cows were my fascination. We slaughter them back home and eat beef. In Mysore, I saw the freedom and the space that the cows and bulls enjoyed. They weren't slaughtered for beef. My performance piece was dedicated to the cows and the bulls. I have a fascination for those animals because of their form, maybe because I don't see myself as any better than the animals. I don't see myself as being any superior," he says.
Born in 1966, Michel lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand. He describes himself as "a first generation New Zealand-born Polynesian of Samoan, Tahitian, with a Cook Island heritage". He says: "Through my art, I am continually exploring the positioning of the contemporary Pacific Island experience." Often confronted with dual concerns, the reality of subtlety fusing in to a more demanding urban environment and respectively identifying alongside one's traditional cultural heritage to challenge perceptions by exploring the limits of materials, and by pushing the boundaries…"
His professional history is, by and large, shaped by his research into, and his encounters with, his Pacific Island ancestry. The outcome is an expansive visibility achieved through his many exhibitions and off shore art projects in Australia, the Cook Islands, the Solomon's, and New Caledonia.
He was "sick and tired of talking about the paintings on walls and found it frustrating to go to galleries where the sculptures wouldn't move", which led to a shift in his art practice over the past few years "from the wall on to the floor, and then from the floor to streets". His work, Pisupo luo afe, was a life-sized bull fashioned from riveted corned beef can, and made for the exhibition, Bottled Ocean, the first survey exhibition of New Zealand Pacific Island contemporary art, at the City Gallery, Wellington, in 1994. "The two life-size mechanical 'bulls' armoured in branded corned beef tins, one representing French Polynesia, the other Polynesia, look at the impact of global trade on Pacific Island cultures," explains Michel."Essentially sculptures and performance artwork of the Pacific Islands focus on complementing the dynamic fabric on which people of the Pacific have based their traditions, language, and ceremonies. Cultural aspects from each island group throughout the Pacific are closely linked beyond the differing language groups, and the ability to communicate through practiced art is continuous, symbolising our differences and identifying our common thread. Our art is live art," he adds. Creating dramatic night time "bull fight", dancers and drummers from the islands of Futuna and Samoa shroud their respective "bulls": taunting, celebrating, chanting, playing out the challenges, and tensions that lie amidst Pacific Island communities, past and present.
Unquestionably, Michel's works are a sensitive and damning political comment on the global trading in the Pacific. They also depict the social tensions within an islander community. Political issues that are dramatised can usually be sensed, rather than fully understood.
N.B.
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