Ātaahua

Ātaahua originally formed part of Star Gossage’s 2024 solo exhibition Whanaungatanga at Tim Melville Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau. The show explored the whanaungatanga, or kinship, that connects people across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean). Gossage wrote of the show:

‘I took my daughter Grace to Tahiti this year. It was a return voyage that my ancestors made centuries ago. When I saw the islands I cried and the people said, “Star, you cry because you feel the mana of the land.” Fiji, Vanuatu, Hawaiʻi, Rarotonga, Tahiti. Whenever I travel in the Pacific I have the same feelings in my heart—feelings of manaaki, aroha and whanaungatanga for the people and their lands. My heart can’t put it into words. Maybe my paintings can explain. I am grateful and humbled by the friendships and connections I’ve been offered across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. It’s always a privilege to return—to paint into my future—and these paintings are an offering to the people whose love and kindness connects us across the great ocean. My paintings represent the gifts of whanaungatanga. They hold my memories and they are made with aroha.’

Ātaahua is marked by brilliant colour that evokes the physical environment of the tropical islands visited by Gossage, but also her intense emotional responses. Her brushwork is by turns energetic and serenely atmospheric. There are strong connections with French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Like Kia Tau, Ake Tonu, Ātaahua depicts a woman and girl. Their identity is not clear. They may allude to Gossage and her daughter, Grace. They may be based on people that the two saw during her travels. Or they may be a vision from the artist’s imagination. Whatever the case, the meaning of the work clearly extends beyond a ‘record’. One might think of the paintings of Mary Cassatt, who frequently created images of the mother and child that evoke intergenerational exchange, maternal nurturing, and the strength of women. Here, Gossage refers to members of a family that stretches across the Pacific and throughout many generations. The work is an embodiment of whanaungatanga, as she states.

Ātaahua shows Gossage’s growing use of abstracted passages of painting. It is hard to tell where the work is set; the environment is only vaguely suggested and melds with the garments worn by the figures. The work features a host of botanical motifs that suggest peace and plenty: floral fabrics, a red hibiscus behind the woman’s ear, a crop (perhaps corn?) in her left hand, a lotus-like flower and an orange in the girl’s hands. The colour is bright yet there is a restive quality to the work, as if it depicts a mellow evening. Unlike Kia Tau, Ake Tonu, which is to a large extent grounded in a specific place and time, Ātaahua moves across locations and through time. It expresses widely shared ancestry and values. The title means ‘beautiful’, and the work is indeed full of visual beauty. However, the beauty explored is really that of the networks that bind people together throughout the Moana region and, by extension, the world as a whole. It is an optimistic work, answering the turmoil of the present with hope.

Photograph by Kallan MacLeod. Courtesy of the artist and Tim Melville, Tāmaki Makaurau.