In January of 1984, Dame Robin White (Ngāti Awa), hosted her friend and fellow artist Claudia Pond Eyley and her daughter Brigid as they visited the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati for a total of 28 days.
She created a thoughtful series of hand-coloured woodcut prints titled Twenty-eight Days in Kiribati, for Brigid, to reflect on her hīkoi.
Each print, one for each day of her stay, featured borders of solid black, shells, patterns and motifs.
They had handwritten text in both English and taetae ni Kiribati as captions.
The series engaged the stories of two young wāhine leading opposing lives in different geographic locations within Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa.
Florence Masipei, an I-Kiribati woman working for White’s family at the time, and Brigid, were both high school-aged at the time.
White reflects on the pair’s unique cultural differences while emphasising and celebrating their likeness through her observational depictions.
Dame Robin (DNZM) was born in Te Puke in 1946 and is of Ngāti Awa whakapapa.
After studying at the Elam School of Fine Arts and teaching printmaking in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in the 1960s, White established roots in Portobello on the Muaūpoko Otago Peninsula.
Alongside her whānau, White later lived in Kiribati for 17 years, following her Baha’i faith.
There she witnessed a significant contrast between Portobello and the low-lying atolls of Kiribati, which are under threat from rising sea levels.
White’s art practice was impacted and influenced immensely by the physical and social conditions during this period in her life.
In 1996, her home and art studio were lost in a fire, leading her to develop innovative and collaborative approaches within her art making, venturing into tapa making, pandanus-leaf weaving, and mixed-media piupiu.
The Forrester Gallery has a selection of White’s prints in its collection including seven from Twenty-eight Days in Kiribati, which came into the Forrester Gallery collection in 1987 with the assistance of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand.
This is Florence (1985) from Twenty-eight Days in Kiribati makes a welcome appearance in Forrester Gallery’s Vault exhibition “Do we moemoeā in colour?” until October 27.
Anna McLean is curator visual arts at Forrester Gallery.