Gauguin in Aotearoa, 2019

In the Gauguin in Aotearoa series, we follow Gauguin’s direction of searching for authenticity, but we di verge from it too. Our artistic concept originates from Picasso's confrontation with the painting Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez. We replace Gauguin’s idyllic timeless Tahitian imagery with our creative approach to New Zealand's heritage and identity. In keeping with our style and aesthetic, our artistic research led us to: using landscape along with Māori traditional symbols and rhythms to bring the location and cultural back ground to life; bringing to the canvas a blend of New Zealand diversity to create dynamism in our series; animating the figures, an aspect that Gauguin chose to omit in his work; re-composing some of Gauguin's paintings to unearth a new meaning and choosing colour palettes to pay homage to Gauguin.