Te Tuhi

Last week on Tuesday our class went to a art gallery called Te Tuhi at Pakuranga. As soon as we got there we sat down in the foyer and then our two instructors came. Their names were Jeremy and Luisa.

Jeremy first said a big welcome and then he told us about what where we weren't allowed to go and what things we weren't allowed to use or touch. He then lined us up in two lines and we headed off to the art room to learn about Polynesian art work/tapa and to do some art.

Jeremy showed us two different types of tapa and one was a Samoan one and other one was a Fijian one. He then gave both of the tapa out for us to touch and look at and he told us to think about the difference in the two tapa.

The difference I found out between these two tapas was that the Samoan one was dyed thick and the Fijian one thin, it was pretty obvious because when I ran my hand through it, it was bumpy and rough. The other difference was that the Samoan tapa had a design of a whole flower and the Fijian one was with a flower in the center and small flowers and diamonds around it.

We then had to do a tapa design but we didn't use real tapa, we used thick paper that had four squares for us to draw in. We scrunched our paper first to make it look like a tapa and then ran over the four squares with brown pastel. We then used brown dye and dyed our whole paper, we then had to give it to Jeremy to put on the stairs to dry.

The class that went to the art gallery before us had done the same thing and left it there for us to do our art on. We all grabbed one and we had to draw something that represented family, culture, home and interest.

In the first square I drawed three hearts with wings on them which represents my family, how? Well there’s only my mum and dad and me. I then drew a cross on the second square and it represents my culture because on the Tongan flag the cross stands out most. On the third square I drew music notes because that's one of my favorite interests. On the last square I just drew a simple house for home. We then had to color two boxes with pastel and the other two with dye.

As soon as everyone finished their artwork we then went for a tour through the art gallery. It was a pleasure to go to Te Tuhi and I really enjoyed my time there.