Description:

Stars Start Falling is an exhibition of three Pacific painters at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth.

The three female artists – Teuane Tibbo, Ani O’Neill and Salome Tanuvasa – represent a collection of artists across three generations. Their works explore a shared interest in the recurring themes of memory and place, through the use of a lively, joyous palette.

The show’s title takes its name from a dream Tibbo had, that prompted her to begin painting in the later stages of her life in the 1960s.

The exhibition sought to address the gallery’s previous lack of Pacific representation within the gallery’s exhibitions and collection.

The brief was to design an exhibition catalogue that reflected this sentiment.

Our approach was to design a catalogue far removed from the templated pages of the usual Govett-Brewster catalogues, and rather create one that embraced the ideas of memory, place and dreams.

The show’s title was hand rendered in organic shapes that conjure the memory of island masses. The letters were then scattered throughout the catalogue’s pages like layers of memory imprints floating in and out of our consciousness in a dream-like state.

Brightly coloured floral forms were paired with drifting paragraphs of text that interact with the title’s letterforms creating playful cartographic interactions.

Finally, the thin, cream paper stock heightens the key themes and grounds the exhibition in the warmth of the earth.

The overall reading experience is one of discovery and exploration across each of the spreads.