Art graduate celebrates exhibition at Pah Homestead

Dunedin School of Art graduate Hannah Leigh Rennie Cockfield this week celebrated the opening of her exhibition, Club Tumeke, at the prestigious Pah Homestead in Auckland.

This exhibition is supported by the Wallace Arts Trust and Jan Warburton Charitable Trust and is in association with Otago Polytechnic’s Dunedin School of Art.

Hannah was the first recipient of the Wallace Warburton Graduate Exhibition Scholarship 2017.

Offered by Wallace and Warburton Trusts, the scholarship includes a solo exhibition at the Pah Homestead in Auckland, contributions towards materials, production costs, freight and travel, an exhibition opening and publicity, as well as the exhibition space for 6-8 weeks.

The scholarship was created to promote graduates who are embarking on a career as a professional artist and, consequentially, need an introduction to New Zealand’s largest and most influential art market in Auckland. An exhibition at the Pah Homestead brings with it an opportunity to meet dealer gallery professionals and potentially being represented by a commercial gallery.

Born in Christchurch, raised on the West Coast, and currently living in Dunedin, Hannah graduated from the Dunedin School of Art in 2017.

Hannah’s cultural identity exists between two worlds of Māoritanga and Westernization, of tradition and modernity, and of custom and innovation. Her landscapes tell a story of whānau and the connectedness being a part of a community brings: realising potential relationships through shared experiences and working together which provides people with a sense of belonging.

“More than the definitive recital of ancestry, whakapapa centres people within a wider context and a shared opportunity to create links with common ancestors, spaces, places, and people,” Hannah explains.

“The imagined spaces in Club Tumeke celebrate collective community, envisioning an amalgamation of Māori and Pakeha knowledge and experience reflected on to the land, which is culturally both and neither: Aotearoa New Zealand. In fragments of colours against vibrant dimensions of layered spaces and intertwined with the buzzing rhythm of surrounding line and pattern, the landscape emerges.

“Just as seawater fills and binds grains of sand, these paintings are informed not solely by the depicted objects; but by balance, the ‘flow’ of the figure and space, and of each painting as part of a greater whole.”

Hannah Leigh Rennie Cockfield’s exhibition, Club Tumeke, is showing at Pah Homestead in Auckland until 19 May.

Captions for photos: Ikamatua – eeykamahtooah, 300 x 300mm acrylic on linen, 2018-19 (at left); and Tamakimakauraunui, 1200 x 1500mm acrylic on linen, 2018-19.

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