Tunu Paraoa/Making Bread

The making of bread is a practice grounded in tradition. For artist Zoe Thompson-Moore, it is a re-engagement with ancestral English, Manx, Irish and Scottish practices, as well as a signifier of wider social and political contexts. Her ongoing project with Enjoy The making of bread, etc uses bread making as an avenue for creating relationships and is an act of practical generosity.

Artist and current Toi Māori education and audience intern Hōhua Thompson also views the making of bread as a connection to his tīpuna. The making of bread becomes a tool to deepen connection and uphold the mana of his whānau in a show of manaakitanga.

Join Zoe and Hōhua for an afternoon to share in kai and kōrero about manaakitanga, the role of bread in social and political systems, domestic life and reengaging with traditions among many other things. Zoe and Hōhua will also make breads important to them to share with you all.

Zoe Thompson-Moore navigates the edges between creative practice and maintenance work, highlighting sites and lived experiences of reproductive labour in particular. This is grounded in an understanding of unwaged, feminised work as being an essential part of capitalist social (re)production—the work that makes all other work possible.

Maintaining the optimal conditions for bread making requires time, attention, care and generosity. Thinking through these conditions of reproductive labour, the artist will use the process of breadmaking to generate new relationships, both with the women she makes bread with and those who eat it.

Hōhua Thompson’s practice combines traditional Māori forms such a whakairo and tukutuku with modern materials and processes to communicate stories from his own whakapapa, and to examine how these stories may apply to a wider Māori community.