Transcript
The pair's trip back to Falevai village four years ago provided a unique opportunity to renew a dying art of making tapa or ngatu and they have also produced their own contemporary work.
The iconic art had not been practised in the village for several decades.
For Sulieti Burrows, seeing the revitalisation of tapa making alongside other women back home meant a lot.
She says it evoked childhood memories, including one of her own mother hitting the bark to make the tapa.
"Actually that's very important because that's my village. And that is where I grew up. And we went over there to do the project and it just reminded me about everything growing up, and I could see my mum sitting over there, beating."
Mrs Burrows' daughter, Tui Emma Gillies, worked alongside to duce big pieces of tapa.
One obstacle was not having any mulberry trees growing in the village.
Another was finding a long piece of wood that had been used to make ngatu in the past which had been left in an abandoned home.
She said they started to use it again, including village stories in their work.
"Huge work up there called Falevai moe Famili. SHows symbols of what we see Falevai to be. Its got women, family, the animals. It has also got an old proverb, a woman who used to sit opposite Falevai , shes a ghost, who used to brush her hair on the rock and men would go over to her and crash on the rock and then she'd disappear."
Mrs Burrows also incorporated knowledge from a quilt conference in Birmingham last year, and is overjoyed at the result.
The director of Pasifika at Massey University, Associate Professor Malakai Kolomatangi, agrees ngatu is dying out in some parts of Tonga, but not all.
He says while the exhibition's contemporary designs may not appeal to purists of the art, he supports it.
"I agree that the art itself has to be relevant to contemporary audiences and if it is not relevant of course the art dies out. And to adapt the motifs and designs to more contemporary tastes I think is a good thing."
Hanna Scott, Auckland Council's Manager of Arts and Culture Programming says she saw the pair's proposal to have an exhibition at Mangere Arts in 2016 but asked to schedule it this year.
"And the reason is that the programme in 2018 is centered on 125 anniversary of women's suffrage and I really enjoyed their kaupapa of mother and daughter travelling back to their home village and giving knowledge of how to make ngatu back to their traditional community and thought it had a good place in the 2018 programme."
Ms Scott says audience reactions to the exhibition and subsequent workshops had been positive as people loved the history and female narratives around the work.
There is also a documentary.
Mrs Burrows says the duo have been given more funding to continue their village work.
"When we went over there and we came back and then we went back again, they started planting the mulberry tree over there. But I look forward to going back this time and see if they still continue or they stop."
The collaborative art project Falevai Flava is also a part of Auckland's Art Festival and ends on April 14
