Celebrated Newcastle-based Samoan-Australian artist Angela Tiatia is about to open her major mid-career survey exhibition, Muse, at Newcastle Art Gallery. Survey exhibitions hold particular significance for artists, offering a rare opportunity to reflect on years of work and achievement when there is often little time to pause and consider their legacy. They also provide a moment to look forward, taking stock of what has been built and imagining the next phase of an artistic career.

Tiatia has risen to international prominence through a multidisciplinary practice spanning video, installation and photography. I caught up with her during the installation of Muse to learn more about the exhibition and, just as importantly, to find out how she was feeling ahead of this significant milestone.

Sebastian Goldspink: Angela, it’s great to catch up on the eve of your opening of your big show Muse at Newcastle which takes in twenty years of your practice. First of all, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years!

Angela Tiatia: My first work was made in 2005 so I can’t believe it either, but the twenty years have flown by so quickly, but it’s also gone slowly. It’s weird

SG: So, I wanted to go back to where you started in Aotearoa before coming to Australia. What was the impulse to start making work?

AT: As a kid, I always wanted to be an artist. But my mum was the first generation to move from the islands to Aotearoa and she saw the world through a very specific lens. She was really worried about my financial future, so she encouraged me but also wanted me to get a degree. I did a Bachelor of Commerce, but it wasn’t really me. Then I had my son, and I enrolled in art school on the first day my son went to primary school. I was a model and actor for twenty years before this. I was raised Mormon, so it was an interesting dynamic. As a Mormon I was meant to be completely covered up and not having any agency over my body and then I became a model at seventeen and completely flipped that. I’m really interested in that dichotomy. Theres such a long history in the Pacific Islands of female bodies being misrepresented by white, colonial, capitalist, patriarchal gaze.

SG: I remember the incredible response you made to Gaughin’s work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In some ways he represents the most emblematic painter known for or I guess guilty of that.

AT: Absolutely, a very active resistance to this that comes from when a female has the camera. When I was young, I didn’t necessarily have all the funds and the crew to make what I do now but that was a very important time when I was younger. Just me and the camera. Self-training.

SG: I think if there is one thing that defines your practice over twenty years it’s courage. A personal courage that allowed you to be yourself and make works. One of my all-time favourite works of yours is Walking the Wall. It gives prominence to your extraordinary Malu (traditional Samoan leg tattooing) which if I remember right was your grandmother’s pattern?

AT: Yes!

SG: I remember you talking about the impetus for getting it being cultural pride and a reverence for your grandmother but also as a tactic to ensure that your modelling career would end and you could be devoted to art. In those years the tattooing would stop you getting booked whereas now days that would be no problem at all.

AT: I really made Walking the Wall for a Samoan audience. By putting the Malu on display I got a lot of, how would you say it?

SG: Criticism?

AT: Hate, I don’t want to be harsh. Aspects of my community were livid, but I wanted to make the point that prior to Colonisation the Malu was proudly displayed. Because of Colonisation vast knowledge systems have been lost. So, I used what I learned through modelling and advertising to craft an impactful image. To hold attention. Draw the audience in with beauty but then punch with the politics. I knew I was being subversive.

SG: Thanks, Tiatia, I’m so proud of you.