The Melbourne Tapa, a 20 metre wide artistic collaboration of 13 Pacific islands women.

Photos courtesy Loketi Niua Latu.

The Melbourne Tapa exhibition will be launched by HRH Princess Latufuipeka Tuku'aho in Melbourne on Thursday 2 August in her first official duty as the High Commissioner of Tonga to Australia, at  the start of a five-day Melbourne tour.

Princess Latufuipeka will also visit the Melbourne Museum to view the Princess Fusipala Collection, the National Gallery of Victoria to view Pacific Collection and The Hunt Club Community Arts Centre to meet Brimbank Council staff who have supported The Melbourne Tapa Project

The Melbourne Tapa is a 20-metre long artwork created over 10 months by 13 Pacific Island women who live in Victoria, and the first of its kind made in Australia. It will be displayed at Craft, 31 Flinders Lane, Melbourne with guest curator Loketi Niua Latu. 

“This unique artwork has a special power as it encapsulates the thoughts and feelings of a wide group of Pacific women from diverse nations who have settled in Melbourne. … As an artwork it both preserves and informs us of how a culture says strong and yet adapts. Each panel of the Tapa tells a particular story and its group format presents a kaleidoscope of views and striking colours. Animals, plants and forms contain elements of narrative, each arresting the eye through its beauty and honesty of depiction, a characteristic of great craft.,” said Joe Pascoe, Craft CEO and Artistic Director.

Loketi Niua Latu told Matangi Tonga Online that The Melbourne Tapa is made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera), decorated in acrylic paint with unique designs. The Tapa is joined together in four layers with cassava paste that stretches 20 metres in length by 1.5 metres in width. 

"The stories presented are deeply personal, celebrating ancestors and heritage. These stories resonate with the blend of cultural traditions and experiences of living between cultures, balancing family values and cultural expectations in the high-pressured world we live where quality demands to be par excellence.

"Despite many difficulties around financing such a large-scale community collaboration, these women and I attempted through the making of The Melbourne Tapa to be recognised as part of Melbourne's vibrant artistic culture. The artistic journey allowed us to help the general public to understand Pacific cultural experiences by interpreting our Pacific past, documenting the present and exploring our future here in Australia.

"The journey together has solidified ties between our individual homelands, the Samoan, Tongan, Fijian and Maori communities here in Melbourne. It is my hope that this journey will continue and that we as Pacific people celebrate openly who we are as individuals within a local, national and global community," she said.

Also attending the launch tomorrow, other Pacific guests will include Adi Keresi Seka Senico, (Fiji), Rev. Samani Sila (FS) (J.P)  and Tupolesava Pulepule Matu’u II of Solosolo, Samoa, and a representative from New Zealand.