Urban Pacific
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at Randolph Street Gallery, Tamaki Makau Rau, Aotearoa, March 2007
Lina Marsh
Niuean, Ngapuhi
Lina has taken the commonly found tourist trinket of the souvenir spoon as the starting point for her work. Within her Souvenir Spoons works, she has directly appropriated the form of the tourist shop spoon and reproduced this motif as a screen printed image on upholstery fabric. Throughout this series of works, the Victorian influenced design of the spoon anchors the work to New Zealand's colonial history, however the embroidered circular images nested within each spoon have provided a source of material to be interpreted and critiqued. Lina has produced her own embroidered images which engage with tourism and its matrix of representations of people, animals and places. This process has led to Souvenir Badges, a series of embroidered responses that retain much of the language of the original but assert their own voice, dislocated from their former frame, echoing the development of craft traditions within Pacific cultures.
God Save the Queen
Lina Marsh
photo credit: Lloyd Osborne
Souvenir Spoons
Embroidery thread, screen print on upholstery fabric
99.5 cm x 33.5 cm each
1. Tangata Pacifica, Tangata Whenua
2. Polynesian Panthers
3. Pacific Tapa:
i City of Sails
Ii Lapita Peoples
iii New Zealand Lei
photo credit: Jenny Fraser
Souvenir Badges
Embroidery thread on canvas
13 cm diameter
1. God Save the Queen
2. Extinct New Zealand Bird
3. Poi-E
i New Zealand Wants Domestic Servants
ii Good Homes
iii Good Wages