tania eruatua short
Gisborne/te araroa

 

Once back in the 90's Tania had a brief fling with being a visual artist. A series of screen prints of her mountain in Te Araroa, Whetumatarau were shown as part of the inaugural Contemporary Pacific Arts Exhibition 'Bottled Ocean', curated by Jim Viviaere. The works were shown at Wellington's City Gallery and then went on to tour the main centres, Toi o Tamaki in Auckland and the Christchurch Art Gallery. This led to many other opportunities to exhibit and be involved in the arts.

However it was really in the curating of shows and the driving of events backed by her previous study in Visual Communications Design that took most of Tania's attention. Tania spent a lot of time learning how to market the arts by working as the account manager for National Treasures Design a company set up by herself and partner Martin Page. Beyond being just a design company, NTD also took on public art contracts for Auckland City including painting some of the first traffic interchange boxes in Ponsonby Road and designing the Malae paving for the University of Auckland's Fale Pasifika, in the recently upgraded Pacific Wing. During this time, Tania furthered her interest in the business of arts by studying towards a Post Graduate Diploma in Arts Management at the University of Auckland Business School.

Now resident in Gisborne, Tania has spent the past ten months developing www.tairawhitiarts.net, the regional arts website representing the Tairawhiti District. Working for Creative Tairawhiti in her role as Creative Facilitator has been an opportunity for Tania to bring together her love of the arts, the Coast, and design. Meeting with many of the artists in this community has also been a significant highlight of the job.

"Arts management and Public Art. These are the things which have given me the greatest arts thrills recently. For me, it’s the large scale arts projects that are the most exciting, both to dream up and to see going from idea to reality. My involement in arts management reflects my love of planning combined with community commitment. The enabling of others to create work and get it out there, and I have been fortunate enough to do it again with my job establishing Tairawhiti's new regional arts website."

You can contact Tania on: taniais@paradise.net.nz