Shannon Te Ao is currently involved in an ongoing collaborative project with Dunedin-based environmental and documentary filmmaker, Iain Frengley. This project focuses on the development of new video artworks that document site-specific performative responses to historical and geographical landmarks. Recent outcomes of the project have responded to a range of sites and events includingplaces of pre-colonial significance, historic gaols and artists’ homes such as the former residence of Colin McCahon.
Follow the Party of the Whale (Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin) (2013)
A commissioned video installation presented as part of Dunedin’s Matariki Festival celebrations. Presenting a number of responses to the historical material uncovered during research relating to a period during the late 1800s where followers of Parihaka movement leaders Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi were held in gaols located around Dunedin. During their incarceration these prisoners were put to labour, contributing thousands of man-hours toward the construction of significant areas of local infrastructure, much of which still serves the city today.
I made my own teeth (Papakura Art Gallery, Auckland) (2013)
A solo exhibition presenting a body of new poetic, text-based prints alongside Untitled (McCahon House Studies), a video work documenting a site-specific performance captured at French Bay House, the former residence of Colin McCahon and his family in Titirangi, West Auckland. In response to the physical constraints of the living quarters determined by the house alongside its present day function as ‘living memorial’ the works within the exhibition set out to ask questions relating to the complexities of work/life balance as they might pertain to artistic practice.
Te Hiko Hou (The New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington and Auckland) (2012)
In collaboration with Iain Frengley presented Untitled (after Rakaihautu) a video work documenting a site-specific performance captured at Whakatu, Nelson the location of first landfall by Māori on the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. This work received a merit at the 2012 National Contemporary Art Awards curated by Caterina Riva held at the Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga Waikato.
