Lorene Taurerewa’s work is influenced by her Polynesian and European heritage. Her creations embody the stark contrast and disparity of native traditions such as the duty of remembrance, the lives of ancestors through mind and blood-lineage, and their presence beyond death, with the bleak history of a colonial society. The artist’s native New Zealand is a country isolated from the homogenizing currents of international exposure where the strains of a very recent migrant history and a fractious cultural interface has played out to create a unique culture.
Lorene Taurerewa’s large-scale figurative charcoal drawings, are distinguished for the inscrutable, monumental, still figures which occupy a middle-distance; an inaccessible space visually created by dense black fields combined with graceful lines. In tangent, her delicate ink work captures tiny figures caught in fluid, seeping black, which visually enacts bizarre narratives in small drawings on dura-lar. These narratives are formed intuitively, running and turning in the flowing of the ink, resulting in strange, quirky, picaresque scenes representing the fraught memories of fragmented lives. The unsettled ghosts and lost souls of her native New Zealand inhabit her figures, visually generating power, grace, loneliness and fragility who play out the narratives of Taurerewa’s work.
Taurerewa spends her time in both New York and New Zealand. She recently completed a residency at the National Art Studio of the Korean National Museum of Contemporary Art. She has recently exhibited in Paris and Los Angeles at the New Zealand Consulate General Residency and will be exhibiting at the Queensland Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia in 2010. She is part of private and public collections world-wide, with recent acquisitions including the Queensland Art Gallery, Australia, and the James Wallace Arts Trust in New Zealand. Taurerewa was recently awarded a Creative New Zealand Arts Council Grant and is featured in the newly published Seen This Century, by NZ art critic Warwick Brown. Taurerewa is going to be a subject in an upcoming New Zealand arts documentary produced by Kirsty McDonald, the filming of which coincided with and took place at the opening of her solo exhibition, Eccentriks, in New York 2008.
Education
2001
Year of Study, MA Program, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
1998
Diploma of Teaching, Secondary Fine Art, Massey University, New Zealand
1996
BFA Painting, Quay School of Fine Arts, Wanganui, New Zealand
Selected Group Exhibitions
2009
Chrysalid, Amelia Johnson Contemporary, Hong Kong
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Pataka Museum, New Zealand, forthcoming
Gallery Korea, Soul Ideologie, New York
Oedipus Rex Gallery, Works on Paper, Auckland New Zealand
2008
New Zealand Embassy, Paris, France
Sarjeant Gallery, Samoa Contemporary, New Zealand
Pataka Museum, Samoa Contemporary, New Zealand
Tauranga Public Art Gallery, Samoa Contemporary, New Zealand
2007
Karanga Gallery, Flat White/Black Pearl, Auckland, New Zealand
Asian Fusion Gallery, New York
Drawing Center Viewing Program, New York, New York
Artists Space, Irving Sandler Artists Files, New York
2006
Mark Hutchins Gallery, 3 persons show, New Zealand
Martin Hughes Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
2005
Sydney Art Drawing Fair, Sydney, Australia
2004
Te Wa Gallery, Wahine Pasifika, Wanganui, New Zealand
2003
Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures, Dolly Mix (W)rappers, Provirus, New Zealand
2007
Oedipus Rex Gallery, Degrees of Separation, Auckland, New Zealand
2006
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Changdong Art Studio, Seoul, Korea
Pataka Museum, Lorene Taurerewa Drawing, Porirua, New Zealand
Sarjeant Gallery, Journey of 1000 Miles, Wanganui, New Zealand
Fifty2gallery, Lorene Taurerewa, Here and Now, Wellington, New
Zealand
2005
Lopdell House Gallery, Big Drawings, Auckland, New Zealand
Lane Gallery, Solitude for the Imagination, Auckland, New Zealand
2004
Pataka Museum, Inherited Bodies, Porirua, New Zealand
2003
Neut Gallery, Body Speak, Wellington, New Zealand
2000
Community Arts Center, Wanganui, New Zealand
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2009
Chaffers Gallery, More Eccentrickery, Wellington, New Zealand
2008 American Indian Community House Gallery, Eccentriks, New York
New Zealand Consulate Residence, Santa Monica, Los Angeles
2008
McCarthy Art Gallery, Martin Hughes Retro Exhibition, Auckland, New Zealand
Oedipus Rex Gallery, Psychopompe, Auckland, New Zealand
Chaffers Gallery, Sensible World, Wellington
2002
Te Wa Gallery, Summer Show, Wanganui, New Zealand
ArtsStation, Ponsonby, Auckland, New Zealand
2001
Waikato Museum of Art and History, Dolly Mix (W)rappers, Hamilton, New Zealand
XSpace Gallery, CosmoPolitan, Auckland, New Zealand
2000
Quay School of the Arts Gallery, Wanganui, New Zealand
Sarjeant Gallery, Pacific Blue, Wanganui, New Zealand
Te Wa Gallery, Wanganui, New Zealand
Bibliography
Mark Amery,The Otherworldliness of Lorene Taurerewa, Dominion Post,
ARTS, April 2009
ArtNews, New Zealand, Lorene Taurerewa, Editorial news, March/April,
2009
Mark Amery, Galleries and the Visual Arts: For Richer and for poorer, galleries
and the economic climate, citation, Dominion Post, Pg 2009
Warwick Brown, ‘Seen this Century’, Random House, New Zealand 2009
Greenpoint Gazette, New York, ‘Art exhibition by Greenpoint based New
Zealand artist Lorene Taurerewa’ 10 October 2008
TJ McNamara, ‘Painted canvas reflects better than a mirror’, NZ Herald, May 1, 2008
Mark Amery, ‘Samoan Shadow Play’ Dominion Post, May 2008
Abbey Cunnane, ‘Samoan. Sort of’, NZ Listener, May 3 2008
Spasifik Mag.com, Lorene Taurerewa, October, 2008
Diana Dekker, ‘From the heart’, The Dominion Post, February, 25, 2008
ArtAsiaPacific, Almanac, New York, pg 251 2007
T.J. McNamara, ‘City and Suburbs’, Auckland Herald, 21\4\2007
Wolgan Misool, Korean Arts Monthly Magazine, February issue pp. 55, Korea
2007
‘No Made’ Catalogue: The National Arts Studio: National Museum of Contemporary
Art, Seoul, Korea, 2007
Spasifik Magazine ‘Connecting with the Past’, January\February, PP 90, 2007
Rebecca Rice, ‘Julian Dashper, Te huringa/Turning Points, Lorene Taurerewa’,
Art New Zealand: pp. 44-45 Spring Issue 2006
Catalogue, Journey of 1000 Miles, Sarjeant Gallery, Wai-te-ata Press, Victoria
University of Wellington, 2006
Catalogue, ‘IASK’ Curated by The National Arts Studio: National Museum of
Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea, 2006
Robyn McLean, “Making Marks on a Grand Scale”, Dominion Post, ARTS,
Section B10, 21/4/2006
Mary Bryan, ‘Results of amazing Journey on display at Sarjeant Gallery’
Wanganui Chronicle, p3, August 2006
‘Lorene takes off’ B4 Arts section New Zealand Herald, November, 2006
Korea Herald, Article, December 2006
Asia New Zealand Foundation Magazine, Article, 2006
‘Lorene Taurerewa’ Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Newsletter, June 2006
Frontseat: TV ONE, produced by Gemma Gracewood, 30/4/2006
Owen Davidson, ‘Spirit and Form, The Art of Lorene Taurerewa’ Art New
Zealand, pp 58-61, November 2005
Gail Bailey, ‘Refusing to sit still’ The Arts Guide, The New Zealand Herald 18/2/2005
T.J. McNamara, ‘Painting goes back to its pure roots’ The New Zealand Herald 18/2/2005
Linda Chalmers, ‘The Arrival of Contemporary Pacific’ New Zealand Investor Monthly, p.3, March 2005
Media
Lorene Taurerewa in forthcoming episode for Kete Aronui Arts Program for
KIWA FILMS, NZ
ABC Radio Australia, Interview with Lorene Taurerewa, The Pacific wave in
New York, May 2009
Teaching Employment
2001-2008
Lecturer for Drawing (tenured), School of Design, Victoria University, Wellington, NZ
