New mural a family affair
A new mural at Square Edge has become a family affair for the Palmerston North artist commissioned to create it.
Azure Ellis, 29, has been working on a brightly-coloured, Maoriinspired design in the Community Arts Centre courtyard, behind Square Edge, for the past two weeks, with a little help from her mother, Margarita Kento.
Kento just happened to be visiting Palmerston North, from Hokianga, as Ellis started, so she lent a hand. She was also surprised to find a mural she’d created for Square Edge 30 years ago, was still there.
Kento’s mural is upstairs, inside Square Edge, where the Community
‘‘I did that mural with a group in 1987, it’s amazing it’s still there.’’ Margarita Kento
Arts office used to be.
‘‘I did that mural with a group in 1987. It’s amazing it’s still there.’’
Ellis has been making art for longer than she can remember. She got her first gallery showing with a group exhibition in Te Manawa when Ellis was 4 years old, Kento said.
The Square Edge has played a part in both their lives. Looking around the space now, Ellis’ knitted sculpture sits on display in the stairwell, almost exactly where Kento had a similar work decades earlier.
Ellis, a Maori Visual Arts student at Massey University, said she was heavily influenced by traditional Maori taniko and tukutuku weaving patterns in her mural’s design.
One of her particular inspirations was St Mary’s Memorial Church, from her mum’s hometown of Tikitiki, which was built with a blend of Maori and Pakeha traditions in 1924.
Since the area was a public space, she also wanted to do something that had strong Maori roots, but still represented a wide range of people.
Taniko and tukutuku were the perfect starting point for the mural, because the angular Maori designs shared similarities with symbols and patterns that had turned up in cultures all over the world, she said.
Ellis expected to have the mural, commissioned through the Palmerston North City Council, finished in the next few weeks.