Julia_Mage’au_Gray

Julia Mageʼau Gray

Julia Mageʼau Gray

Dancer, choreographer and tattoo artist from Papua New Guinea

Julia Mageʼau Gray (born 1973) is a dancer, choreographer and tattoo artist from Papua New Guinea, who is credited with revitalising women's tattoo traditions in communities from Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

Biography

Mageʼau Gray was born in 1973 in the Mekeo-speaking area of Central Province, Papua New Guinea.[1] Her mother was Papuan and her father Australian.[2] In 1997 in Adelaide she co-founded Sunameke, an arts performance company with Yolanda Gray, Katrina Sonter and Samantha Sonter.[1][3] Her work as a dancer and choreographer is inspired by her Papua New Guinean heritage.[2] She is known for her criticism of "western" attempts to use one word for all the cultures of the southern Pacific Ocean, citing the wide variety of languages spoken and diversity of lived experiences.[4]

In 2014 she retrained as a tattoo artist, building on the interest she had acquired in Melanesian tattooing in her work as a choreographer and film-maker.[5] She was encouraged to learn the art after a trip to Samoa in 2012, where she met the Samoan artist Suluʻape Saʻa Alaivaʻa Petelo.[6] She apprenticed for six months in New Zealand, where she learnt both hand-poke and hand-tap tattooing.[6] Often working with hand-poke techniques, she has described the process as "surprisingly gentle".[7] In 2017 she tattooed art dealer Lana Lopesi live, as a performance which was part of the exhibition Lain Blo Yu Mi – Our People Our Lines held at Vunilagi Vou gallery.[8] The exhibition was curated by Ema Tavola, and was staged as a tribute to the central role that Mageʼau Gray has played in the revitalisation of Melanesian women's tattoos.[5] In the same year Mageʼau Gray travelled to Spain, where her work was exhibited as part of the Traditional Tattoo and World Culture Festival.[9]

Mageʼau Gray is known for her work tattooing Fijian veiqia designs, for example on artists Dulcie Stewart and Luisa Tora, as well as other members of The Veiqia Project.[10][11][12] She also the first person in eighty years to tattoo traditional designs in the Mekeo area, that had been discouraged by the colonising activity of missionaries.[6] As a result of her work on reviving female tattooing in Melanesia, she was profiled in Crafting Aotearoa as an artist bringing traditional artistic practices to contemporary audiences.[13] Her audio-visual work Best Foot Forward has been acquired by Queensland Gallery of Modern Art.[14]

Filmography

  • Best Foot Forward (2011)[1]
  • Tep Tok: Reading Between Our Lines (2013–15)[8][3]

Exhibition and performance

  • Lain Blo Yu Mi – Our People Our Lines (2017)[8]
  • Wahine Toa (2017)[15]
  • Melanesian Marks: IG (2019)[8]

Personal life

As of 2015, she lived in Australia with her Māori husband.[2]

References

  1. [1]
    "Julia Mageʼau GRAY - QAGOMA". 2021-10-09. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  2. [2]
    "Highlight: Julia Mageʼau Gray 'Best foot forward' - QAGOMA Blog". 2021-10-09. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  3. [3]
    "Tep Tok - Reading Between Our Lines - NCCA Northern Centre for Contemporary Art". 2021-10-09. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  4. [4]
    Case, Emalani (2021-02-28). Everything Ancient Was Once New: Indigenous Persistence from Hawaiʻi to Kahiki. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-8680-6.
  5. [5]
    "LAIN BLO YU MI – Our People Our Lines". 2021-10-09. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  6. [6]
    Krutak, Lars; Deter-Wolf, Aaron (2017-11-28). Ancient Ink: The Archaeology of Tattooing. University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0-295-74284-7.
  7. [7]
    "Traditional Melanesian female tattoos being revitalised and created by hand needling | Stuff.co.nz". 2021-10-09. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  8. [8]
    "Drawing lines between us all: Julia Mageʼau Gray's Melanesian mark-making | The Spinoff". 2021-10-09. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  9. [9]
    "Te Waha Nui". 2021-10-09. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  10. [10]
    "My tattoos helped me feel closer to my Fijian heritage | SBS Voices". 2021-10-09. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  11. [11]
    "Traditional Fijian female tattooing marked out in new exhibition | University of Canterbury". 2021-10-05. Archived from the original on 2021-10-05. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  12. [12]
    Driver, Felix; Nesbitt, Mark; Cornish, Caroline (2021-04-19). Mobile Museums: Collections in circulation. UCL Press. p. 321. ISBN 978-1-78735-508-8.
  13. [13]
    Eshrāghi, Léuli (2021-05-04). "Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania". The Journal of Modern Craft. 14 (2): 203–206. doi:10.1080/17496772.2021.1961371. ISSN 1749-6772. S2CID 237609957.
  14. [14]
    "Search Results". 2021-10-09. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  15. [15]
    "Pacific Female Choreographers Kick Off Pacific Dance Festival In New Zealand | Pacific Islands Report". 2021-10-09. Archived from the original on 2021-10-09. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
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