Michel Tuffery

Cookie in Rarotonga

Wellington based artist Michel Tuffery works in the areas of printmaking, sculpture, performance art, painting and design, new media and animation. Michel’s work grows out of his creative curiosity and passion for his Polynesian (Samoan, Rarotongan, Tahitian, papa’a) heritage and his heartfelt relationship to the Pacific region, its people and the environment. Often this manifests in the use of traditional motifs and symbols like the pili and laumei.

Michel’s celebrated mechanical sculpture series and performances, Pisupo Lua Afe (a bull made from corned beef tins), parodies the way imported food items have become a part of traditional island life. His metal riveted sculptures of sea creatures and graph crate work Rango Pango (2004) reveal cultural and environmental tensions and consequences of Western consumerism and packaging. Michel enjoys creating sites of engagement to challenge established history and expose underlying social and cultural tensions.

First Contact- Performance/Projection Installation

He has recently focused around the use of laser impressions, digital imagery, computer technology and creative collaborations. In First Contact, 2007 (Wanaka Festival of Colour, 2007, Pataka Museum, Dateline: Contemporary Art from the Pacific, NBK, Berlin) Michel collaborated with Anton Carter, Michael Bridgeman and Daimon Shwalger along with students from 2 local Wanaka primary schools to produce a large multimedia work. He comments “I’ve always worked collaboratively, whether it’s with the community, youth groups, or other artists, this is just the same but using technology”. First Contact explores historic encounters between European and Indigenous people of the Pacific layered with contemporary performance, imagery and sound.

First Contact also featured in a major survey exhibition of Michel’s artwork at Pataka Museum, Porirua (2007). The

Tangaroa Tangaroa Tangaroa Siva

exhibition included a recent series of prints, paintings and bronze sculptures based on Captain James Cook and his navigation of the Pacific in the 18th Century. Re-examining documented history, Michel explores Cook’s relationship to the Pacific peoples he encountered, along with the significant role of high priests Tupaia and Mai who accompanied Cook on these voyages. Michel gives extra consideration to Tupaia, known as the first Polynesian to use western art mediums.

Tangaroa's Beautiful Afro up the Whanganui River

Michael was awarded a New Zealand Order of Merit on the Queens Birthday honours list for 2008. He has received several national and international art awards, public commissions and residencies and has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions including Samoa Contemporary, Pataka Museum, Porirua (2008); Pasifika

Styles (2006 -2008), University of Cambridge Museum, UK; Across Oceans and Time, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, R.O.C (2007)

Le Folauga (2007), Auckland Museum; News from Islands, Campbelltown Art Gallery (2007); Paradise Now? (2004) Asia Society Museum, New York; Mata Mata Phusion (2002) Auckland City Art Gallery.