71the weight of the responsibilities she is expected to
carry in order to adhere to fa’a Samoa. As Tonga
writes: ‘This interesting shift from Ioka as the “good
daughter” to the very picture of teenage angst reflects
the inner conflict that takes place in the everyday lives
of some New Zealand-born Samoan women.’^7
Upstairs, Ioka appears again in Miss Amituanai
(2005). She stands, wearing all white, in the Amituanai
living room, surrounded by other photographs of
family members. It is in this image that she seems the
most herself; though there is still a sense in which she
is defined by her surroundings, this time standing in
less for young Samoan women generally than as a
representative of her family. They are present, not just
in the framed pictures around her, but in her: in her
authority as she faces the photographer’s lens. The
image belongs to the Mrs Amituanai series (2005), shot
during the events surrounding the photographer’s
marriage to her husband, Ioka’s brother. A close look
at Miss Amituanai reveals that it was shot after the
event: Mrs Amituanai is pictured—the only time her
likeness appears in Double Take—in a photograph
displayed in a heart-shaped frame on the mantelpiece,
taken on the day of her wedding. Nothing, here, is
candid; nor is it feigned. Miss Amituanai is a picture
of a woman, but also of her family, the network of
relationships they have allowed to be imaged by
the camera. The staging of the shot—its careful and
considered arrangement—does not come at the cost
of realism, so much as tease out the composure and
performance, the vital, tender postures of the home
and all that comes with it. The same is true for the
Déjeuner series (2006–07) tucked away downstairs in
the Deane Gallery, portraits of Samoan rugby players
based in France and the living spaces they have left
behind in New Zealand.
The pose, then, becomes a kind of participation,
heavily mediated by the endless limitations and
possibilities of collective life. But how much to reveal,
how much to give to the camera, is a matter of the
subject’s private, delicate calculation. In The End of
my Driveway (2011–12) Amituanai confronts that. She
stationed herself, before 9 a.m. and after 3 p.m., at
the end of her driveway in Ranui, and photographed
the uniformed school children passing by. Some
acknowledge her presence by throwing up gestures
or smiling into the camera; others are oblivious or at
least pretend to be. It is a remarkable series of images:
an ode to the space between; where the obligations of
school and home are, momentarily, suspended. This is
not to say that the walk home is necessarily joyful, or
exuberant; but rather that it might be uninhibited.
If The End of my Driveway moved towards the street,
Amituanai’s most recent work has taken her straight
onto it. The Lower Kirk gallery includes photographs
from three series: La Fine del Mondo, ETA (Edith’s Talent
Agency) (2015–ongoing) and Keep On Kimi Ora (2017),
which illustrate Amituanai’s engagement with and
commitment to the wider village. At the gallery’s end
Dason on Te Mata Peak (2017), a photograph of a young
man doing a handstand in the face of an expansive,
rolling landscape, takes up most of the wall.
Amituanai excels at picturing this narrative: young,
brown people at the top of the world. It is not—we
need only look back at New Zealand’s history of
documentary photography—a narrative regularly
pictured. She did it too in Sina to Save the World (2017),
which was, for a while, posted on a billboard at the
corner of Taranaki and Vivian streets; Sina’s arms
lifted, ready to take flight.
‘Who knew Tongans were the sculptors of the
Pacific,’ Amituanai said that Friday night at the Adam,
‘they’re making these siren castles on their cars.’
These castles—with noble titles like SnowWhite and
SwitchHittaz—were stationed outside the gallery
the night the exhibition opened, sound pouring from
the L.A.P.S. siren crew’s many, many megaphones.
‘No matter what I do, all I think about is you,’ Kelly
Rowland sang into the Hunter Courtyard, ‘Even when
I’m with my boo, you know I’m crazy over you.’
Behind the cars, on the gallery’s exterior window, was
pasted a super-sized print of SwitchHittaz preparing
for Siren Battle (2018). In Buster Milani’s video of
the evening, Double Take preview, people wearing
SwitchHittaz hoodies pose grinning in front of the
photograph.^8 The village pulled up.- Greg Dening, ‘Performing on the beaches of the mind: An essay’,
History and Theory, vol. 41, no. 1, 2002, p. 9. - Edward Hanfling, ‘Am I Making Art?: The Photographs of Edith
Amituanai’, Art New Zealand 130, Autumn 2009, p. 22. - To be staged at Circa Theatre in November.
- Line and Shiloh Playing Cards, from the Mrs Amituanai series, is not
included in the exhibition. - Haruhiko Sameshima, ‘The Documentary Impulse in Edith
Amituanai’s Work’, in Edith Amituanai: Double Take, Adam Art
Gallery, Wellington 2019, p. 44. - Ibid.
- Ane Tonga, ‘Edith Amituanai: A Double Take’, in Edith Amituanai:
Double Take, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington 2019, p. 12. - Buster Milani, Double Take preview, 2019. Video available at: http://
vimeo.com/345820187.
(opposite above) Edith Amituanai’s Double Take at the Adam Art
Gallery, Wellington, May 2019, with Dason on Te Mata Peak (2017)
(opposite below)Siren battle on opening night of Edith Amituanai:
Double Take at Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi, 10 May 2019
(Photograph: Shaun Matthews)
(right) EDITH AMITUANAI Miss Amituanai 2005
C-type print, 1000 x 900 mm.