Chantel Matthews

I sea a vessel filled
with tea: exploring the
day-to-day Wāhine, 2021

St Paul St Gallery

Considering the day-to-day struggles and complexities of juggling as an artist, mother, partner, wahine, and everything else in-between, these works use ‘the everyday’ as an opportunity to incorporate Māori ways of knowing that seek to embrace, empower and uplift through notions of whakapapa.

Waiheke Small Sculpture Benefactors Merit Award 2021
In Pursuit of Greatness without a map, 2021

Uku, Glaze
200mm x 70mm

I am not made by the prehistoric hands of pottery. I am made by the ancestral hands of poverty so to fill me with foreign waters, not of my own is to strip me of my nothingness.

Waka ā Hapori (Community Waka) 2020

Onehunga Bay Reserve, Auckland, NZ

Plywood, Recycled Milk Bottles.

Whānui, Auckland Art Festival.
Outdoor Installation
Onehunga Bay Reserve, Auckland.

Waka ā Hapori (Community Waka) is a sculpture inspired by a waka tētē (fishing canoe). Waka tētē were historically used for the transportation of people and goods along the surrounding rivers of Tāmaki, due to its abundance in kaimoana and cultivation. In contrast to today, the fish scales bring awareness to the depletion of our kaimoana due to overfishing, heavy pollution and rubbish in our waters, especially plastic. Considering milk as a staple in New Zealand homes, using milk bottles as a material highlights dairy agriculture affects such as the degradation of clean air and water as well as plastic waste in our landfill. The workshops included creating 3,000 fish scales made from recycled milk bottles which adorn the waka.

Images 4-8 in gallery taken by Raymond Sagapolutele

majority rules, 2020

Gow Langsford Gallery

Domestic Brooms, approx 3 metres.

“But our experiences aren’t objects. They’re us, they’re what we’re made of. We are our situations, we are our moving through them. We are our participation – not some abstract entity that is somehow outside looking in at it all.” Brian Massumi, Politics of affect (Cambridge, U.K.: Wiley, 2015)

Bruno Latour, after Heidegger, worked to transform the semantic emphasis of ‘things’ from ‘matters of fact’ to what he describes as ‘matters of concern’. Working with objects and performance, Chantel’s practice discusses social, political and cultural concerns through her own subjectivity as a woman, mother, artist and Māori. “My work is interested in the self and society, examining my own position in the world by creating moments that encourage the viewer to ‘experience’ the heightened moments of today’s social issues, which may be otherwise invisible, to foster critical thought. The objects I make, are both ‘things’ and ‘matters of my concern’ which then invite the viewer to observe, engage, and perhaps impact the self and society in a different and positive way.”
- Artist statement, 2019

Review
John Hurrell – 27 February, 2020
http://eyecontactsite.com/2020/02/art-school-sampler

And now you're gone, 2019

Wooden Box, Crush Porcelain, Waiwhero, Brooms, Paper, Flowers, Sound.

I don’t know what I’m doing but I do know why.
Overflowing tea pots, scrubbing floors, crashing smashing epiphanies that is my zone. Sweeping, the Māori way, the white way, it’s all heated, defeated, trouble since the cot, have you seen my mana? I think I forgot. The most vulnerable are dying as we live in the past. Systems like blisters, shiny shoes, statistics rolling off the tongue, are we done? Maybe to buy, maybe to cry, maybe to sigh, maybe to lie,
I don’t know what I’m doing but I do know why.

4yr project exploring nurture and neglect as a mother while witnessing headlines of NZ child abuse cases.

The Artist & The Undertaker. 2020

Auckland Art Gallery

Video, 2 x Mobile Phones

The Artist & The Undertaker is a 3 minute loop inspired by David Mealing’s public withdraw of his work at the Auckland Art gallery, Groundswell: Avant-Garde Auckland 1971–79.

Video Link below ( Intended listening with headphones)

"School didnt teach me shit from Clay” she said, age 61. “Huh, interesting” she said, age 39, 2019

Performance

A performative piece that discusses the gap between a generation that weren't able to have an education or felt not worthy enough to a generation that is seeking to bridge that gap and by doing so, healing in the process.

The Encounter, 2019

Lake House Art Gallery
Auckland

Black & White Photograph
460mm x 410mm
Giclée Print

Inspired by Max Dupain, 1937, Sunbaker, The Encounter is an inquiry into an experience that seeks to produce a language beyond knowing.

Bystander of Tomorrow, 2016

Nathan Homestead, Manurewa, Auckland

A2 Digital Prints
Installation

Chantel Matthews (Perawiti) grew up in Glen Innes. There is currently a major overhaul of state housing and re-development taking place in this area. Streets have been demolished making way for a new modern multi-cultural community.

Exploring this ‘modern multi-cultural community’ Matthews-Perawiti likens it to the Maori Land March in 1975 where alienation, land, power and cultural shifts were central catalysts for protests. In this free for all land grab the gap between those that have and those that have not widens leaving this small suburb of locals watching as ‘politics’ moves in.

'Bystander of Tomorrow' talks about protest, the cultural shifts and the future generation where land or the idea of ‘home’ looks out of reach.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/87647744/chantel-matthewsperawiti-documents-changing-landscape-of-glen-innes

Chantel Matthews is a Visual Artist. Her practice can be described as sculptural moments that explore social, political, and cultural concerns through her own subjectivity as a Wahine/Woman Artist. Works and resides in Tamaki Makaurau, Aotearoa, New Zealand ( Ngāti Hounuku, Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Tahinga, Ngāti Ikaunahi, Tainui Awhiro)

Exhibitions

Master of Visual Arts Graduating Show, 2021, St Paul Street Gallery

At the Foot of the Maunga: Whanui Auckland Arts Festival 2020

Prelude: Gow Langsford 2020

What's inside matters: Silo6 2019

The Artist and the Undertaker: Auckland Art Gallery 2019

Emergent: See Lake House Arts Gallery 2019,

Bystander of Tomorrow: Nathan Homestead Manurewa 2016.

Atamira Maori in the City: Shed 10, Auckland City 2013,

Ferrari 2013,

Muka: Te Noho Kotahitanga Marae 2012.

Awards