Lorene Taurerewa: This Is No Fantasy Gallery, Melbourne Australia, Lorene Taurerewa

Lorene Taurerewa, New Zealand born and New York based, weaves her personal and historical family narrative into her large-scale, almost life-size, charcoal drawings and intimate watercolour on paper works, which grapple with the age-old questions of who we are and where we fit in. Here, Taurerewa bravely unearths and scrutinizes the forces that shape her and gives form to the anxieties that lurk in the dark corners of the psyche. Taurerewa’s images are visual fragments, drawing on familial narratives, stories from 1600´s through to today, to excavate the complexities of ancestry and history and to acknowledge their place in forging identity.

Taurerewa has been awarded a slew of grants and awards. She has been honoured with solo exhibitions at the Pataka Museum and the James Wallace Trust in Auckland and her work was curated into ‘Unnerved: The New Zealand Project’ at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. Taurerewa’s work is in numerous institutional collections including the National Gallery of Victoria.