Northern Skies, Southern Stars exhibition key

Abstract

A celebration of contemporary Maori and Pacific Island art and culture in the twenty-first century. In this exhibition, six leading multi media artists, working with new technologies, have adapted pre-existing artworks to digital media. The photographs presented here introduce a Pacific iconography that, while familiar from (often exoticising) film, literary and museum portrayals, is little recognized as a vibrant and cosmopolitan ongoing concern. This show offers an opportunity to view the rich variety of these works before the May 2006 opening of Pasifika Styles, a major international exhibition at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CUMAA), which showcases the work of over twenty artists from New Zealand alongside the Museum's unparalleled Oceanic collections.