Star Gossage
Kia Mau ki te Mātauranga ō tō Wahi / Hold Fast to the Knowledge of your Place, 2025
gouache, acrylic and chalk on canvas
1835 x 1215mm
Courtesy of the artist and Tim Melville Gallery
This painting is of here. Pakiri. Everything I see every day. Everything I pick up and feel. It reminds me of gentle tides, of ebbs and flows. It speaks about...
This painting is of here.
Pakiri.
Everything I see every day.
Everything I pick up and feel.
It reminds me of gentle tides, of ebbs and flows.
It speaks about the knowledge people hold of their place; their whenua, their moana,
their plants and stones.
People of a place are the knowledge-holders.
After everyone has left you remain. You are still there – taking care, watching what
grows, what washes ashore, what leaves and what stays, what thrives through all
seasons.
People are a part of the tai ao.
When you are kaitiaki you start to meld and merge into and out of the environment.
You become one and you become almost invisible.
Hold fast because we are all kaitiaki of the places where we live.
- Star Gossage, 2025
The work of Star Gossage (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Ruanui) is emotive and ethereal. Gossage lives and works on ancestral land in Pākiri, northeast of Auckland. There is an immediacy to Gossage’s use of line and brush, while her layered combinations of colour seem to defy definitions of time. Figures that occupy her landscapes are deeply connected to the whenua, whānau, and wairua of place. At times barely indistinguishable from their surroundings, they often appear as though tūpuna / ancestors. Of her work Kia Mau ki te Mātauranga ō tō Wahi / Hold Fast to the Knowledge of your Place Gossage comments, ‘This painting is of here. Pakiri. Everything I see every day. Everything I pick up and feel... People of a place are the knowledge-holders... When you are kaitiaki you start to meld and merge into and out of the environment. You become one and you become almost invisible. Hold fast because we are all kaitiaki of the places where we live.’
Pakiri.
Everything I see every day.
Everything I pick up and feel.
It reminds me of gentle tides, of ebbs and flows.
It speaks about the knowledge people hold of their place; their whenua, their moana,
their plants and stones.
People of a place are the knowledge-holders.
After everyone has left you remain. You are still there – taking care, watching what
grows, what washes ashore, what leaves and what stays, what thrives through all
seasons.
People are a part of the tai ao.
When you are kaitiaki you start to meld and merge into and out of the environment.
You become one and you become almost invisible.
Hold fast because we are all kaitiaki of the places where we live.
- Star Gossage, 2025
The work of Star Gossage (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Ruanui) is emotive and ethereal. Gossage lives and works on ancestral land in Pākiri, northeast of Auckland. There is an immediacy to Gossage’s use of line and brush, while her layered combinations of colour seem to defy definitions of time. Figures that occupy her landscapes are deeply connected to the whenua, whānau, and wairua of place. At times barely indistinguishable from their surroundings, they often appear as though tūpuna / ancestors. Of her work Kia Mau ki te Mātauranga ō tō Wahi / Hold Fast to the Knowledge of your Place Gossage comments, ‘This painting is of here. Pakiri. Everything I see every day. Everything I pick up and feel... People of a place are the knowledge-holders... When you are kaitiaki you start to meld and merge into and out of the environment. You become one and you become almost invisible. Hold fast because we are all kaitiaki of the places where we live.’
14
of
14