Bios
Hana Pera Aoake (Ngaati Hinerangi me Ngaati Raukawa, Ngaati Mahuta, Tainui/Waikato, Ngaati Waewae, Kaati Mamoe, Waitaha) is an artist and writer based in Te wai pounamu. Hana published their first book, A bathful of kawakawa and hot water in 2020 with Compound Press. Hana holds an MFA in Fine art from Massey University (2018) and was a participant in the ISP programme at Maumaus des escola artes (2020). Hana has published writing widely including in Granta, Ockham lectures pocket series, Artnow, Running Dog and many more. Hana is a current participant in Regional assembly, an artist-led online studio programme connecting cultural practitioners working in regional and remote geographies across the Asia-pacific.
Arapera Hineira Kaa Blank was a Māori poet and teacher. Born and raised in Rangitukia in the northeast of New Zealand's North Island, she was one of a small group of Māori writers writing in English during the 1950s. In 1959 she was awarded a special Katherine Mansfield Memorial award for her essay Ko taku kumara hei wai-u mo taku whanau. She was married to Swiss-born Pius Blank for 44 years and had two children, Marino and Anton. For the last ten years of her working life Arapera taught te reo at Auckland Girls' Grammar School where the girls knew her as Ma Blank.
Morgan Godfery (Te Pahipoto, Ngaati Manaipoto, Ngaai Tuhhoe, Ngaati Tuuwharetoa, Lalomanu (Samoa)) is a writer and trade unionist. He is the editor of The Interregnum, published by Bridget Williams Books in 2016, and has columns with Metro and The Guardian. Morgan also regularly appears on radio and television as a political commentator, has authored numerous academic chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles, and works in Research and Enterprise at the University of Otago and is an associate at The Workshop, a public policy thinktank. Morgan is also a former staffer for the late Parekura Horomia, the Minister of Māori Affairs in the 5th Labour government.
Hemi Hireme (Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Raukawa) is a decolonial educator and researcher.
Priscilla Rose Howe(Pakeha) is an Artist and graphic designer currently based in Ōtautahi. Her art practise is inspired by supernatural worlds and theatrics to explore her queer experience using predominantly pencil. She recently exhibited a solo presentation at The Auckland Art Fair with Wet Green and a solo exhibition at Sanc Gallery. As a designer she was a finalist for The Best Design Awards Graphic Selection (2017) and holds a Bachelor of Visual Communication Design(1st class hons) from Massey University (2016)
Aroha Novak (Ngai Te Rangi, Ngati Kahungunu) studied Sculpture and Installation at Dunedin School of Art, completing her undergraduate degree (2007). She was awarded the David Con Hutton scholarship towards postgraduate study and completed her Master of Fine Arts (2013), also at Dunedin School of Art. Her work has focussed on escapism, utopias and idealism within a capitalist, postcolonial and institutionalised society, frequently working outside of traditional gallery spaces and collaborating with other artists. Her work is often research and project based, drawing out indigeneous and local histories that have been forgotten or suppressed. Novak is a multidisciplinary artist, letting the concept dictate the materials used by employing a new approach to each project. Her practise encompasses sculpture, installation, painting, design, photography, sound and video
Jessica Palalagi was born in Aotearoa/New Zealand and traces her ancestry to Niue/Nukututaha in Te Moananui a Kiwa and Aberdeen, Scotland. She has an MA in Art History from Auckland University and has most recently been involved in sustainability within the retail sector in the UK. She is a founding member of In*ter*is*land Collective; a misfit collection of queer, moana artists and activists based around the world. Her artistic focus is born out of the duality of existing in the interstice, the vā, the space between and she constantly seeks meaningful reciprocity in all forms of expression. She is made of the saltiness of all moanas spanning hemispheres, the journeys that her ancestors navigated, the movements of dark to light made by the mahina, the languages that have been lost, the strength of the matriarchs before her and the music of Barry White.
Anna Rankin is a writer, journalist, and filmmaker who lives between Aotearoa and the United States; Alaa' Breighith is an architect, the daughter of the great Palestine from the town of Beit Amr, the immortal emblem “exist is to resist”.
Daniel John Corbett Sanders (b.1994) is a Jewish Pākeha artist and curator from Ngāmotu, New Plymouth. His work and research investigates the dreams and catastrophes of urban history viewed through queer narratives of inner-city life, and engages with queer investments in questions of sovereignty, biopower & necropolitics, especially as played out in local and global histories and events. In 2020 Sanders founded Parasite, an artist-run gallery prioritising the exhibition of LGBTQ+ artists.
Annette Sykes is a human rights lawyer specialising in the rights of indigenous peoples to promote their own systems of law and has a strong focus in her career on all aspects of law as they affect Māori especially constitutional change. Annette is renowned for her activism and protest against the New Zealand government on issues affecting Māori and this has been an active part of her career and community activities. Annette has been practicing law since 1984 and currently has her own law practice in Rotorua, Annette Sykes & Co Ltd where she is from, Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāti Makino of Te Arawa waka with strong whakapapa connections also to Ngāti Awa and Tūhoe.
Jade Townsend (Ngāti Kahungungu, Te Ātihaunui-a-Pāpārangi) is a visual artist and storyteller working at the intersection of her Māori and British heritage. Townsend has curated Whānau Mārama an exhibition programme including over 16 Māori artists at Commercial Bay for Matariki in Auckland where she is concurrently exhibiting her first major sculptural commission – the nine whetū of Matariki. Townsend was recently awarded artist-in-residence at Artspace Aotearoa and has completed other residency programmes at Objectspace, Slade School of Art in London and Red Gate gallery in Beijing.
Te Whanganui-a-Tara based interdisciplinary artist, Tessa Williams, explores the relationships Māori have with each other and their natural environment. Tessa considers current issues as well as the way that she makes impacts on herself, her community and her environment. Producing a mixture of ephemeral, painted, photographic, video and sculptural works, Tessa allows her audience to engage on different levels with the kaupapa , united into a single statement of intent, but created through the lens of one Māori māmā.