Visual Arts students attend workshop held by New Zealand artist

A group of Visual Arts photography students were invited to take part in a practical workshop led by New Zealand artist, Emily Parr as part of the artists in schools programme coordinated by Te Tuhi Art Gallery.

Emily Parr (Ngāi Te Rangi, Moana, Pākehā) works across the visual arts fields of film based, photography and illustration-based work. Emily’s website biography states “her moving image practice weaves through time and space”. Her work explores settler-indigenous relationships over oceans and centuries. She draws from archival materials, her homelands of Tauranga Moana, Sāmoa and Tonga, and shares the responsibility of her ancestral legacies and her family’s connection to taonga and measina.

Students were invited to bring in images that spoke to them of a family story and their own whakapapa which they could use in analogue and digital layering processes to create story-telling based artworks. The practical work produced in the workshop along with the engaging artist talk given by Emily provided students with a rich opportunity to develop and extend ideas in their own art practice.