Rakau Matarau is an exhibition of works on paper and cardboard combining both 2D and 3D forms. The artist blends customary Māori art forms with tattoo and graffiti style influence, representing young Māori who identify with both Māori and metropolitan culture. These drawings and sculptures navigate beyond the planes of the materials they fill; the line that bleeds from Arapere’s pen also walks through time and space, adapting, reinvigorating and searching through the visual language left by our tupuna (ancestors). Examples of this visual language can be seen adorning many marae across Aotearoa today, and the work intends to activate a fresh understanding of pivotal Maori cosmological narratives.



