Jade Townsend
Te Atihaunui a Pāpārangi, Ngāti Kahungunu
About the Artist
Jade Townsend (Te Atihaunui a Pāpārangi, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a visual artist working at the intersection of her Māori, Pākehā and British heritage. She describes it as a “non-fixed scene of cultural multiplicities that ebb and flow between contradicting priorities. My wairua connects to many different cultural fields which I unpack through painting, sculpture and exhibition making.”
Jade was born and raised in Whanganui before moving to Liverpool, United Kingdom where she lived as a teenager. Townsend’s exposure to a wide range of accents, dialects, regional slang, folktale and pūrākau made her aware of the limitations of translation and cultural hybridity as transparent processes, “Translating between two cultures is messy and imperfect – I am interested in the parts that are left over or left behind.”
This year Townsend completed a 5-month residency on her turangawaewae as The Tylee Cottage Artist-in- Residence in Whanganui, she also travelled to America as Artist-in-Resident at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Recent exhibitions include He Whare Ātaahua at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga – Hastings Art Gallery and Āta Whakarongo Whanganui Māori Arts Collective. Townsend has exhibited globally across museum, gallery and concept store spaces and holds a BA Hons Fine Art Painting from Manchester Metropolitan University.
Te Ara i Whiti
Alloy, 2024
Alloy is a sculpture which examines the beauty and tensions held within historical artefacts relating to Aotearoa and Britain.
The expression “Born with a silver spoon”, can be traced back to 1719 when it was first printed in English. It was used in many contexts including literal ones, for those who carried their own cutlery to eat with – a silver spoon was a sign of wealth. Over time the expression went on to describe those who had advantages more broadly such as access and networks. Today, it is used for a person from any cultural background born with privileges including wealth, education, and influence. The silver spoon is a loaded colonial object with history on this whenua.
From the late 1860’s we can trace the arrival of Silversmithing here in Aotearoa when objects of affluence such as spoons were produced. Workshops were established and local gold provided the silver to work with. Gold had a high silver content of about 34 percent and was alloyed as a less valuable metal. Cutlery, church ornaments, baby’s rattles and gifts for visiting royals featured pounamu handles and insets with kowhaiwhai inspired engraving. These historical artefacts carry multiple histories of cultural appropriation, colonial rule and extraction. Alloy is a work that seeks to deal with those histories by reimagining ‘the colonial silver spoon with a pounamu handle’ as an ornate sculpture of Hina, our Māori moon goddess or, perhaps it’s Puanga, a shining single whetū?
You can find “Alloy” at Te Ara i whiti from October 4 – October 13, 2024 at Kelvin and Marina Park.
