Julia Mage’au Gray is a dancer, choreographer, tattoo artist, photographer and filmmaker, who explores her Papuan heritage — specifically, her Mekeo heritage — in the context of the urban diaspora. Dress and adornment, including the marking of the body with tatu (tattoo), are of particular significance in the artist’s multifaceted practice.

The moving-image work Best foot forward 2011 explores the intersection between urban and traditional lifestyles, and the artist’s dual Papuan and Australian heritage. It features the artist’s sister Yolanda — in a golden Mekeo skirt customarily worn for sing-sing (performance) — walking along an Australian road. The skirt extends the performer’s body, its organic fibres moving fluidly with her steps, and contrasting with the spiky impact of her shoes, which are desired, discarded and then picked up again.

Commissioned for 2023–4 exhibition ‘sis’, from old to new old 2023 exposes audiences to both the hardships and joys that the artist and a group of Papua New Guinean women have experienced as they have sought to reawaken the ancestral practices involved in marking bodies, which were prohibited from the mid nineteenth century by Christian missionaries. Bringing together photographic documentation, hand-drawn tatu (tattoo) designs, video footage and firsthand accounts, this work invites audiences to acknowledge histories of racial discrimination and cultural annihilation. The work also encourages visitors to consider their own actions and how these may or may not perpetuate such acts.

The creation of from old to new old 2023 was supported by Creative New Zealand through Mana Pasifika.