Event Details
Join us for a kōrero with Wairoa-born artist Joyce Campbell and Te Reinga storyteller Richard Niania, alongside visiting Japanese artist Ai Iwane, Gallery Director Sophie Davis and Assistant Curator Kurumi Kido.
Currents Calling Home brings together practices shaped by waterways in Wairoa, Northern California and Japan, grounded in forms of ecological care and restoration. The exhibition traces movements between river and sea through the stories of tuna (longfin eel) and salmon.
Hear from Richard Niania and Joyce Campbell of Mānawatia te Wai about Te Taniwha—a collaborative project grounded in Wairoa histories, relationships and knowledge—and how this work has developed over time. Ai Iwane will speak about her work capturing the moment a river reconnects with the ocean, the return of salmon, and her ongoing relationship with the land and local community.
Ai Iwane (b. 1975, Tokyo, Japan) started her photography career in 1996 after studying at an alternative institution in Northern California, where she pursued an off-the-grid, self-sustaining lifestyle. Since 2011, she has been exploring the link between the United States and Fukushima by documenting the experiences of migration and displacement. This project led to the book KIPUKA (2018), which received the 44th Kimura Ihei Photography Award, the 44th Ina Nobuo Award, and the 2022 Prix Pictet Japan Award. Her images evoke invisible connections that transcend the boundaries of time and space, providing a broader understanding of history and geography.
Iwane has exhibited throughout Japan and internationally, including at Les Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles, the Dali International Photography Exhibition, and Hawaii Triennial 2022.
Joyce Campbell (b. 1971, Aotearoa New Zealand) is an Auckland-based interdisciplinary artist whose work utilises anachronistic photographic techniques — daguerreotype and ambrotype — alongside analogue and digital photography, video, film, and sculpture. Across these media, she examines the collision of natural and cultural systems, often in extreme environments: microbial colonies, forming crystals, glacial migration, distressed coral reefs, dead forests, river gorges, and desert washes. She has exhibited throughout New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.
Campbell holds an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland (1999), where she is now Associate Professor. She has also undertaken residencies in New Zealand and Antarctica. Campbell is represented by Two Rooms (Auckland), Bartley + Company Art (Wellington), and Nadene Milne Gallery (Arrowtown and Christchurch).
Richard Niania (Ngāi Kōhatu, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa) is based at Te Reinga in the Ruakituri Valley near Wairoa, where he is tribal historian and kaumātua of his Ngāi Kōhatu Hapū. He was educated at St Stephen's School, Bombay, and attended Victoria University in 1973. In 1975 he returned to Wairoa to work on the Tauwharetoi Incorporation until he joined the Department of Māori Affairs in 1987. When the Department was devolved in 1989, Niania returned to Victoria and in 1991 completed the BA he had begun in 1973. He returned to Te Reinga in 1992, taking up leadership roles in Hapū, Iwi and Community organisations in Wairoa and the greater Ikaroa-Rāwhiti region. He has worked with Joyce Campbell on Te Taniwha since 2010, a long-term project resulting in several exhibitions relating to the hītoria (histories) and pūrākau of Te Reinga and its people.
(Image: Ai Iwane (left) with Joyce Campbell and Richard Niania of research collective Mānawatia te Wai.)
