Yours is an uku-based practice. How did you start out working with clay? What about the medium clicked for you artistically?

My practice is centred around making relationships, both with people and the whenua and therefore the atua that connect us to the taiao or natural world. I work with many different whenua, uku being one of them. The whenua I use, whether it is onepū (black sand) or kerewhenua (clay based ochres) is often a response to a place I connect to, either by whakapapa or whānau ties. The first time I used uku as a painting medium, it didn’t carry the whakapapa connection of the uku that I use today, it was store bought. The idea to mix non-firing clay with acrylic paint came from an experiment to upscale my oil pastel works based on Hine-Ruhi to a large scale wall work for the exhibition The earth looks upon us – Ko Papatūānuku te matua o te tangata, curated by Tina Barton for the Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi. The work was 10 x 4 metres and was painted in situ over a weekend, up and down, up and down on a genie, so I needed large quantities of the medium with a consistent outcome. As a temporal work, in hindsight it would have been interesting to have let the clay crack over time – something I am exploring at the moment. The acrylic binder however kept the clay intact, even as I tore the under layer of signwriters paper off the wall. Uku is a beautiful medium, each batch with its own unique characteristics, especially when working it up with the hands. I am only using its properties as a slip, or in dried form as a pigment, but thinking up new ways to work with it all the time.

There has been a strong push recently to bring focus to the medium, particularly by wāhine Māori, through initiatives like the Kauae Raro Research Collective. Have you felt the effects of this community in your own practice?

I have had the utmost privilege of being welcomed by the founders of Kauae Raro into their rich fold of wānanga and shared collective knowledge. The decision to form a research collective drawn out of a deep love for the whenua and how it enriches our lives creatively, energetically and spiritually is a gift that every one of us ringatoi/ringarehe who interact in this space are appreciative of and feel empowered by. Earlier this year Sarah Hudson ran one of her Kauae Raro wānanga at The Dowse in support of my solo exhibition Takoto ai te Marino for all whenua based ringatoi in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. Beyond the act of collective making and sharing knowledge, these spaces are an opportunity for lasting whanaungatanga. Connections new and old are woven further into our shared desire for Hoki Whenua Mai / Land Back and Tiaki i a Papatūānuku. I am forever thankful for this collective force.

Whenua is embedded materially and formally in your clay-daubed paintings, which conjure both close-up views of bodies and landforms seen from afar. Does this connection to place give the works a different resonance when you’re exhibiting overseas? 

I am very conscious of taking whenua away from its roots, its ūkaipō, especially if it may never return. I think of our many taonga overseas in museums and galleries that sit cold and disconnected from home and I am reminded of the powerful work He Tautoko by Lisa Reihana, where she placed headphones on a carved Poupou at the Cambridge Museum playing songs from home. There is a lesson in this work for myself and other contemporary makers around how we keep our mahi safe when there is not a kaitiaki present to keep it warm or accurately share its kōrero. When I first exhibited in Sydney with Day01 Gallery, gallerist Eloise Hastings included a clay work by the late aboriginal artist Kunmanara Carroll. For me this piece acted like a kaitiaki, a welcoming and holding gesture for my pieces in a new land.

In the context of sharing whenua based works that speak of where I am from and stories of my tīpuna in Australia, I feel a resonance with the paintings of many Aboriginal artists. There is a connection in the way the whenua keeps telling stories far beyond the intentional marks of the artist.

Can you tell us about the works you’re exhibiting for Melbourne Art Fair?

The seven works presented by day01 at the Fair are connected by the use of aumoana, blue clay collected from my ancestral whenua on the shores of Tīkapakapa Moana, on the East Coast of Tāmaki Makaurau. They are each a different interplay of aumoana with various other whenua I work with such as onepū from the West Coast or kerewhenua with its many rich ochres. They explore family stories of loss and reconnection, each work becoming another pearl on the string of a fractured whakapapa that I am slowly piecing together.

Turei’s work can be seen in day01’s booth at the Melbourne Art Fair, taking place 22–25 February 2024 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.