TIVAIVAI TALENT
Tungane Broadbent features in Brisbane
By Shona Pitt

Tungane Broadbent...attended the official opening
of the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA)

Emerging textile artist Tungane Broadbent has just returned from Brisbane. There she attended the official opening of the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and the 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.
Broadbent was commissioned by the Queensland Art Gallery to produce a traditional Mangaian tivaivai for the Triennial exhibition which is a feature of the Modern Art Gallery.
More than 1000 dignitaries, visiting international artists, politicians and media attended the opening of the $100 million gallery. They were hosted by Premier Peter Beattie on behalf of the Queensland Government.
The 5th Triennial Exhibition has brought together more than 300 works from leading artists in the region.
While Broadbent was the only artist from the Cook Islands invited to attend the function, her work features alongside two other Cook Islands tivaivai. There are tivaivai from Hawaii and Tahiti as well.
Broadbent said she didn’t realise the significance and importance of the event until she got there and she was glad to have the company of her husband Peter.
LIFE
Talented and creative, Broadbent said she absorbed her skills for producing exquisite tivaivai unconsciously.
“I lived it, I grew up in an era where women worked on sewing tivaivai, it was just part of my life,” explained Broadbent.
The tivaivai made by Broadbent and on display in the exhibition was inspired by a Mangaian tairiiri - fan pattern that belonged to her mother.
The pattern was cut for her mother Aumetua Brown by Nga Arataura.
Broadbent cut a similar pattern for herself and it was this bedspread that the assistant curator of the Queensland Gallery saw on a visit to the Cooks and wanted to buy.
“I told her that under no circumstances could I sell it as it was sewn for me by a special woman the late Mama Mere Tuavera,” she said.
“However, I did agree to make them one exactly the same.”
Broadbent said that it took her seven months of painstaking work to reproduce the tivaivai for the gallery. Gallery staff returned to Rarotonga to document her making it.
Upon completing the bedspread Broadbent sent it to the gallery. She said she thought nothing more of it until she was invited to attend the opening in Brisbane with all expenses paid.
Broadbent thought it would be nice if her husband could accompany her and asked the organisers if it would be possible.
“They did agree to that and boy, am I glad that he came with me. I just didn’t realise the enormity of the occasion,” she said.
“It was nice to have him with me, as it was such an important occasion in my life.”
Overwhelmed and inspired by the experience, Broadbent said that it has given her a new focus and ideas of where she is going and what direction to pursue artistically.
“Although, I like to reproduce our traditional patterns, I am now thinking of how I could incorporate the modern designs along side the traditional.”
The exhibition in Brisbane will run until May 2007.

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