KARAWA TARAWA MARAWA (SKY LAND SEA)

McLeavey Gallery is honoured to present Karawa Tarawa Marawa (Sky Land Sea), a striking five-panel work from Robin White. This major new work offers a return to her oil painting medium of the 1970s and speaks to the remarkable range and continual evolution of her practice.

Raised in Tāmaki Makaurau, White graduated in 1967 from Elam School of Fine Arts where she was taught by Colin McCahon. After living and working in Paremata and Dunedin, Robin White, her husband and their 8yr old son relocated to the atoll of Tarawa, capital of the central Pacific Republic of Kiribati where she worked with the local Bahá'i community while continuing her art practice.  

Her art works of this time are rooted in everyday details and conversations reflecting her first-hand experience of place. Although she has been based in Masterton since 1999, her time in Kiribati and the people she forged relationships with have had a lasting impact on her life and art. Karawa Tarawa Marawa takes us back into the everyday of the locals with whom she shared a life for seventeen years. White hopes that people can connect with these figures and the unique yet universal life they live.

While White was doing a residency in Canberra in 1997, she had an opportunity to study the French wallpaper Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique (1804–5). This series of drops,  joined together to form a panoramic scene, was popular throughout Europe and North America, its stereotypical depictions reflecting the limited understanding of the time. White’s immediate response was to re-orient the view and see the Pacific from within, starting with the stretch of beach between her home and the village shops, noting what she saw in passing.

Through a process of elimination, White decided that this work was best suited to painting with oil. The result is a rich and beautiful work which carries the history and dignity of the people and the medium.

This major new work will be accompanied by a series of mono-prints, vignettes of the larger vision.