Take a peek inside the closet of a world-renowned artist, a noted curator, and an executive people leader, and find out what we can learn about them through their shoes. Hear from Lisa Reihana, Nigel Borell and Karepa Wall about their shoe collections on display in Well-heeled: Shoes with Personality. Director Karl Chitham will be diving into the stories behind the shoes, and the lives of their wearers, to get a glimpse of the personalities behind the shoes. Come along and walk a mile in the gorgeous shoes of these three fabulously shod individuals.
Lisa Reihana is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans film, sculpture, costume and body adornment, text and photography. Since the 1990s she has significantly influenced the development of contemporary art and contemporary Māori art in Aotearoa New Zealand. She has earned an outstanding reputation as an artist, producer and cultural interlocutor with her attention to the complexities of contemporary photographic and cinema languages expressed in myriad ways. Reihana represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2017 with the large scale video installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected] (2015-17). The work premiered at the Auckland Art Gallery in May 2015 and has since become a seminal work in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history canon. in Pursuit of Venus [infected] has since been shown around the world and garnered widespread critical acclaim.
Nigel Borell is of Pirirakau, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Te Whakatōhea tribal descent. He is a curator, writer and artist specialising in Māori art in both customary and contemporary fields of research. His career began working on three meetinghouse projects under tohunga whakairo Pakaariki Harrison and Peter Boyd followed by formal study at Massey University’s Bachelor of Maori Visual Arts (Hons) in 2000 and a Master of Fine Arts (Hons) in 2003 from Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland. Borell curated the large survey exhibition Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2020-2021), where he was the Curator Māori art from 2015-2020. He is currently Curator Taonga Māori at The Auckland War Memorial Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira.
We asked Karepa Wall for a bio but haven’t heard back from him. He may have been buried under an avalanche of his collection of more than 250 pairs of shoes. Someone should really do a wellness check.
