Moana Currents

Moana Currents: Dressing Aotearoa Now

Looking through the lens of fashion, the exhibition ‘Moana Currents’ considers the history of migration and cultural exchange, adaption, and adoption in the Pacific, Te Moana nui a Kiwa.

The exhibitions document how these histories are visible in what we wear and how we adorn ourselves, showing how various threads drawn from across the Moana are being woven together to produce a new cloth from which we in Aotearoa are dressing ourselves today. Moana Currents seeks to build understanding of how the many histories of Oceania are interwoven and how our place in this Moana has led to the development of a distinctive Aotearoa identity and on our sense of ourselves.

A dress by Trelise Cooper that harks back to the missionaries, a glamorous gown by Sheena Taivairangi and Tepora Tamariki that has its origins in the sampler, a Neil Adcock hei tiki that can dance, and Steve Hall's urban lavalava, together with many other objects such as hats, bags, jewellery and tattoo are unpicked to explore the origins, alterations and transformations that are at the heart of the contemporary manifestations seen in the exhibition.