Michael Tuffery is a New Zealand-based artist of Samoan, Rarotongan and Ma’ohi Tahitian heritage. Within his art practice he plays the role of working “in between” people and places, and focusing a fresh lens on environmental, community, cultural and art historical divides.

Tuffery works in a number of media including printmaking, posters, woodcuts, lithography, sculpture, set design and performance pieces.  Explaining his choice to work in many media, he comments 'I’m fascinated by everything I see around me.  I like to have a go, interpret how I see things, because if you don't try you'll never know'.

Our tamariki researched Michael Tuffery, we looked at Tapa cloth and how it was made and what purposes it had, thus creating mini tapas of our own with a pasifika influence, crushing paper to emulate texture, hand painting them with ink with a sharpened stick to emulate the process. We then looked at the art Michael creates and looked at food gathering which is a big influence in his works and created 3D sculptures of sea life/food and again hand painted these to finish the body of work. 

I am incredibly proud of the fantastic results. Here are some of the rangatahi amazing pieces of work.

Shelly Sanders - HOD Visual Art