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Profile – Raukura Turei
Raukura Turei’s practice encapsulates an intriguing dichotomy, balancing the rigour of architecture with the creative freedom and personal histories expressed in her paintings.
Based in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Raukura Turei is many things – a multi-disciplinary artist, an architect and a mother. Currently living where she grew up – central Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) – and with a young family of her own, Raukura Turei’s life reflects a charming connection back to her roots. She currently works as a principal architect at Monk Mackenzie while also maintaining her own art practice.
Integral to that practice is her heritage and reconnecting to her ancestry. “I was fortunate to grow up at the time of the Kōhanga Reo movement, which was the Māori language revival in the ’80s,” she says. “As Urban Māori, the community I had around me growing up was a vibrant circle of Māori, Pasifica and Pākeha artists, teachers and activists who became our whānau [extended family and community]. There was always a creative approach to the way things were done, which I feel has fed into my own creative energy.” Along with her whānau, the natural landscape also became central to her creative pursuits as an artist and architect, and it remains a source of material inspiration stemming from countless trips to the West Coast as a child.
Most of Raukura’s early inspirations for her artmaking came from the creative community she was exposed to. However, she also has a pragmatic side that led her to practice architecture. “I used to paint a lot in high school but when it came time to think about university, I didn’t really know what to do,” Raukura says. “I had a fear of having to live and survive on painting alone, which is where architecture came up as a strong suggestion from my art teacher Marte Szirmay – it was something that would use my problem-solving and scientific brain but still allow my artistic side to come through.”
Raukura received her Master of Architecture (Prof) from the University of Auckland in 2011 and registered as an architect in 2015. After a few years of practicing, which was all-consuming at times, she took time off to travel. It was during this time, which led to a chaotic period in her personal life, that she felt the desire to paint. “I had a low point and this led to a big realisation of what was important to me and that was when I started painting again.” This intuitive urge for art-making came from a longing to feel like herself again and to find repose from the rigour of architecture. “I created methodical, cathartic and slow drawings that allowed the chatter in my mind to stop – an almost pointillist mark-making led by the body and not the mind.”
Once she was back in Aotearoa (New Zealand), Raukura pursued a consistent art practice while still working as an architect. Today, she has one to two studio days a week. “The key to balancing both has been constantly having momentum,” she says. While Raukura’s style has evolved over the years, her making is heavily influenced by the whakapapa (genealogy) of the natural world. Her art offers an exploration of Atua Wāhine, Māori female deities that connect to elements of the natural world while meditating on the self and sensuality.
“When making, I need thinking time, drying time, experimenting time, and then I need to step away and come back to it.”
Raukura now has a permanent studio at Corbans Estate Art Centre in Henderson that acts as a dedicated space shared with her partner, a Māori Tā Moko artist, which they have called Te Ahurewa. “Having a dedicated studio has enabled us to create a very calm space with the intention that the work can flow freely within,” says Raukura. Her time in the studio is sacred, each day beginning with Karakia – a morning prayer where she connects to place and pays respect to the atua (deities) connected to the materials she is working with.
“When making, I need thinking time, drying time, experimenting time, and then I need to step away and come back to it,” says Raukura. As such, her process is highly intuitive and every day in the studio is different. “There is a science to it, but like the way I bake, there is no recipe.” She uses natural materials gathered from Te Uru, Auckland’s west coast, especially onepū (black iron sand) and kerewhenua (ochres). From the east coast, near her turangawaewae (ancestral lands) she collects aumoana, a blue clay. “My younger brother Rehua is my art assistant – after gathering materials, they are dried and then we grind them into powders and mix those into pigments.” Utilising linen, paper or plyboard for larger-scale pieces, each work is layered, meaning she focuses on multiple pieces at the same time. “Every time I make a work, it will have its own life and intricacies that I can never emulate.”
Her artwork has been exhibited throughout New Zealand at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, The Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki, Objectspace and many more, and internationally at the Tokyo Art Fair, Sydney Contemporary, day01.gallery in Sydney and this year’s Melbourne Art Fair.
Raukura’s work as an architect and as an artist coexist – they are intentionally kept very distinct but also feed off one another. “I keep my art separate in order to give myself and my painting sacred space,” says the multidisciplinary creative. However, the support and recognition Raukura has received from her art practice has given her confidence to be more expressive as a Māori woman in architecture. “My work now in both fields is less of a lens on myself, but rather, a collective focus,” she adds. Both her practices culminate in a layered, enduring reflection of being a Māori woman – and both are integral to her creative evolution.
