Last year Robert Leonard described Ranginui’s works as ranging from the “polemical and political to the enigmatic and poetic.” Perhaps more known for the former, Ranginui’s works for the 2022 Aotearoa Art Fair certainly sit within the latter camp this time around. Intimate, ethereal and palpably quiet, Ranginui presents a new body of photographs that arguably have a stronger relationship with painting than the lens. Using chiaroscuro to emerge figures from infinite bodies of water, Ranginui’s sitters are ever-so-gently treated, rendered and held. Wrapped, draped and veiled, the subjects bleed into and out of one another and their surrounds, calling to mind Millais’ Ophelia and Bouguereau’s Innocence. Ranginui’s painterly pictures are characteristically her own with there gothic-romantic tone and subversion of religious or moral narratives. Appearing otherworldly, Ranginui once again deftly walks the line between the melancholic and grotesque and the alluring and seductive.
Tia Ranginui (Ngāti Hine Oneone) currently lives and works in Whanganui. Ranginui has been presenting work in Aotearoa for more than ten years. Major recent exhibitions includeTia Ranginui: Gonville Gothic, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington (2020), Tia Ranginui: Tua o Tāwauwau, Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, Whanganui (2022), Tia Ranginui: Gonville Gothic, Tu Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Auckland (2022). Ranginui’s work is held in several notable collections including The Dowse Art Museum, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua, Waikato Museum and Wallace Arts Trust.
