Adorn yourself accordingly

Arawhetu Berdinner, Kōuma Mahara, 2026 (detail). Photo by Florence Hilyer-Brandt.

Arawhetu Berdinner, Kōuma Mahara, 2026 (detail). Photo by Florence Hilyer-Brandt.

upcoming
12 Sep – 24 Oct

Arawhetu Berdinner, Bailey Gardner, Te Māreikura Whakataka-Brightwell

Adorn yourself accordingly brings together the work of three emerging artists living in Te Upoko o te Ika a Māui, under the broad theme of Māori and Moana adornment. 

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Arawhetu Berdinner has an enduring interest in the artforms of her ancestors. Guided by ngā atua Māori and ancestral makers, Berdinner’s practice considers material culture as carriers of whakapapa, and the creator as a conduit for that exchange in real time. Bailey Gardner creates unique pieces of jewellery using found shells, metal, and hand woven chains. Gardner collects common shells on a small scale from a variety of beaches to lessen her impact on te taiao—a practice that honours Tangaroa in the wake of our climate crisis. Te Māreikura Whakataka-Brightwell questions dominant narratives of beauty while working with what he has coined ‘Big Fat Ugly Pearls.’ Driven by his Tahitian and Māori whakapapa, Whakataka-Brightwell uses the kinds of cultured pearls that the French Polynesian Government in Tahiti is trying to ban, actively resisting colonial impositions in his own mahi toi.

Each artist exhibiting in Adorn yourself accordingly works with natural and synthetic materials, exploring the tension between the two while contributing to exciting experiments in contemporary adornment.

 

Curated by Brooke Pou

Arawhetu Berdinner (Te Arawa, Ngati Pikiao, Ngati Whakaue) is based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. She has recently completed a Masters in Fine Arts through Massey University. Arawhetu’s multi-disciplinary practice spans adornment, installation, and painting, and is about whakapapa to materials, whakapapa of concepts and the whakapapa of making. Her working processes follow ancestral pathways of tikanga practices, to acknowledge and bring forth the mauri of the natural materials in the taonga-based entities she makes.

Bailey Gardner is the artist behind seapunks.xx, a brand that imagines a future already subsumed by the deluge, populated by punks and scrappers. The shells at the heart of each artwork chart the designer’s perambulations across the motu. Every work forms under an exchange carried by instinct—responses to shape, colour, material, mistakes, experimentation, and of course, desire. They offer a recognition of and a reply to a future already washing up at our feet that we might still meet with imagination, adaptation, and style. seapunks.xx has exhibited at NYC Jewellery week 2025 and is showing at Slug pop-up. 

Te Māreikura Whakataka-Brightwell is a Tahitian and Māori artist descended from a long line of artists, navigators and cultural innovators. His practice is grounded in whakapapa, ritual, memory and cultural transformation. Working across sculpture, adornment, performance, and installation, he draws on Indigenous materials, forms and knowledge systems to explore ideas of beauty, grief, identity, and belonging. His work brings ancestral references into contemporary contexts, creating objects and experiences that move between ceremony, taonga, and art. Central to his practice is a commitment to cultural integrity and carrying inherited knowledge forward in new forms.