Lustre Harbour Kathryn Tsui

Coromandel based artist Kathryn Tsui presents a selection of wonders to discover inside the walls of Toi Tauranga Art Gallery. These intricate artworks consider the value and labour of craft-making, paying homage to East Asian material culture and to Aotearoa art predecessors.

Tsui acknowledges the lines of craft genealogy she arrives from, the near and distant shorelines of her practice: bringing into focus the red-white-and-blue patterns that arrived in Aotearoa through the carry bags of migrants, and weaving in symbolic elements of traditional Chinese textiles seen on visits to museum collections and family heirlooms. Tsui’s artworks centre connection to various ports of lineage – from her parents’ diasporic lives in Aotearoa, to the history of feminised and unpaid domestic labour, to Aotearoa art and craft figures like Wailin Elliott and Ron Sang who have paved the way for makers in Aotearoa today. Cultural, material and labour histories, are all threaded together through hand and loom.

The past is not relinquished to lie forgotten in a dusty corner but instead blows a live wind into the crafted present. Like a cluster of fresh pearls or a scroll of silk fabric, these art objects hold light close to their surface, beckoning you closer to their rivers of trade and confluence. Regard the beaded bricks of a modernist kiln, flowers emblazoned with colour raising their heads skyward, and auspicious clouds rising like smoke above the horizon. Enjoy the lustre harbour!