Tupuna Whaea: Mere Taylor-Tuiloma is healing through art
Just 50 artworks have made the final shortlist in the collaboration between New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakata and the Office of the Kiingitanga. Māori artists from all over the motu (country) were called upon to create portraits of their tūpuna. Massey’s very own Mere Taylor-Tuiloma hand crafted a sculpture named ‘Tupuna Whaea’. Massive spoke to the multi mixed-media artist ahead of the launch of the exhibition at the Portrait Gallery on the Wellington Waterfront.
Mere Taylor-Tuiloma is a distance student based in the Far North. She was born and raised in a “beautiful Māori rural community in Hokianga called Motukiore” with “my grandparents, mother, cousins and brother”. Her artwork is spun from her very personal connection to atua (gods), kaitiaki (guardians), and tūpuna (ancestors). “When I create, I create with not just me but with all the kaitiaki that choose to love me and work with me. I create with all my ancestors, I am they and they are me, every cell in my body, every part of my DNA comes from them. They are all of me. When I create artwork whether that be from my voice… or through my hands... it’s all a part of me. It’s all channeled into me, through me and out through my voice and my hands.”
Mere’s artistic journey has certainly spanned many mediums. Her career in original Māori music began in 1989. Then she released Whatumanawa, an album of love songs, in 2004. When it comes to her recent endeavours, Mere described her kaupapa as “gift of healing through art, through my music and my artwork”. She’s a healer, and her exploration of paint began at a healing expo in Whāngarei. Delving into a story about a seemingly accidental discovery she could paint, Mere recounted that the people around her aided in this discovery. Another stall holder helped her mix the brown paint she needed to paint a feather, and when gifting that finished painting back to this woman, an awestruck passerby struck up a conversation with Mere. “Up until six years ago, I couldn’t paint, other than painting houses,” she laughs.
This experience grounded her creativity in healing, which she calls “toi ora”. The interaction had a profound effect on Mere who thought, “I better go learn how to paint”. She went on to complete various art courses. She kicked things off with improving her technical painting skills, then went on to print making, and finally, “fell in love with uku (clay)”.
Mere completed Maunga Kura Toi, the Bachelor of Māori Visual Arts, at NorthTec. Her mokopuna (grandchild) was just a few weeks old when she started the degree. She decided her very first piece would be an ipu whenua (vessel for afterbirth). “I received the afterbirth back, and I made this beautiful ipu whenua… that was really beautiful for me to make that for my mokopuna … that was the last I touched clay for most part of my degree.”
She went on to focus entirely on her painting technique. It came around to the final semester of her degree, and to everyone’s surprise, Mere decided to venture into clay sculpture. “I was told by several of the ceramic clay artists from up home, in Tai Tokerau, that I should concentrate just on the basic forms, and [not to] aim too high. That I shouldn’t set myself up to be disappointed because it’s not gonna work. I wanted a hip-height sculpture, but because I was just a newbie, they were trying to help me ease into it gently.” But, she says, there was something that was really moving her to follow through with what she had in mind. She ended up creating a total of four sculptures, for her end of degree exhibition, for which she notes her “kaupapa was mana wāhine”. Focusing entirely on the four “significant powerful” phases of her life (being a kaikaranga, kaihautū becoming a mum, and then a grandmother), she created four sculptures, and two painted portraits; just in case the sculptures didn’t make it through the firing. All up, it took Mere five months to complete the sculptures. “I made them one after the other and then I fired them all at the same time.” She went on to describe the fickleness of working with clay, that if the clay isn’t of an even thickness, it’ll crack and if there are any air bubbles in the clay it will blow up. She wasn’t sure they would survive, but they did and she was ecstatic.
Afterwards, she was advised to fire them again, this time in a pit firing. An all-natural process, Mere even collected some seaweed for it. They survived that too. She cleaned them up, and waxed them because “they looked paru (dirty)”. Her first ever sculptures had made it!
In December, the Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award caught her eye, and she decided on deviating from the usual painted portrait. “I’m going to do a sculpture,” she said to herself, and recalls she felt really drawn to do so. When the post-grad semester started, she was “still working on Tupuna Whaea’’ and so she incorporated that mahi into her studies.
Mere recently hand-delivered the sculpture to Wellington, weighing in at over 25kgs. You can check out “Tupuna Whaea” at the Portrait Gallery. The exhibition will be open to the public from 28 May and goes through till August. After that, the exhibition is going on tour around the motu.
Mere is doing her post-grad qualification at the moment, working on four kaupapa. The multitudes of multi-faceted sculptures surround themes of healing grief, generational trauma, soul retrieval, and betrayal. When asked about what’s next for this incredible wahine, Mere took a breath. “I’d love to be a full-time practicing artist.” She reiterates that her whole kaupapa is healing through art. “The people who either purchase, or are inspired, or moved by my artwork, the healing happens for them also.” She’s open to commissions, and has got a website in the works.