Last Friday, we attended an opening at Corban Estate Arts Centre for an exhibition featuring work from six of our students.
Whetūrangitia
This exhibition presents four Māori wāhine artists from Waitākere College: Amber Cullen, Kayceigh Green, Mya Lautaimi Henry, and Lhani-Aroha Maagdenberg. It brings together visual art practices, including photography, painting, sculpture, and illustration, to explore ideas connected to whānau, memory, and whakapapa.
Through personal narratives, symbolism, and contemporary image-making processes, the artists reflect on identity, connection, place, and intergenerational relationships. Their works draw from lived experiences and cultural knowledge to communicate stories that honour the past while speaking to the present.
Whetūrangitia - Workshop Bella Rei Frost and Maddison Meredith were our two students who took part in the Whetūrangitia workshop series. Corban Estate Arts Centre invited Sāmoan installation artist and siapo maker Florence Ulutunu to guide local senior secondary school students through a three-day workshop, introducing traditional beating methods to create siapo (bark cloth).
Bringing together students from Liston College, St Dominic’s College, and Waitākere College, this workshop offered them the opportunity to explore culture, identity, and belonging through siapo. It allowed them to build their own individual practices while creating collaboratively, contributing to a collective knowledge.
The exhibition is on at the Homestead Galleries (Corban Estate Arts Centre, 2 Mt Lebanon Lane, Henderson) for six weeks until the 8th of August, if you would like to check it out during the school holidays.
42 Rathgar Rd