21/10/2026
Salome Tanuvasa has given her current exhibition of 12 new paintings a very long title 💥
“OFFCUTS - Repurposing discarded, overlooked scraps of coloured paper - rearranging them to reveal new perspectives – thereby creating potentialities in the consideration of colour, space, balance and composition.”
She describes her work as “communicating an intuitive sense of the places where I find joy - in my home and with my family.”
Indeed, her preparation for this body of work occurred alongside her family at the kitchen table.
The artist and three generations of her family, sitting together, used random offcuts of coloured paper to make a large number of A4-size collaged paper works - some of which included traces of printed text or were embellished with crayon markings.
HANAHIVA ROSE, Kaiwhakarākei Curator at the Adam Art Gallery at Victoria University of Wellington writes:
“Salome Tanuvasa’s thoughtful and evocative paintings explore the qualities of form and colour.
I have been familiar with [her] practice for some time and was particularly struck by her recent paintings for their engagement with histories of European modernism.
With determined vitality, Tanuvasa’s paintings offer a contemporary Pacific response to abstract painting traditions, locating themselves firmly in her culture and community while looking out towards the wider world.
Her work follows the possibilities of a line, a mark: their capacity to repeat, evolve and carry us through time and space.”
Salome Tanuvasa’s work is held in collections including the Chartwell Collection at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade, University of Auckland and the Arts House Trust.
Website at link in bio.
Salome Tanuvasa
Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery
The Chartwell Project
The Arts House Trust
