Lonnie Hutchinson, born in Auckland in 1963, has dual Samoan and Maori heritage, with tribal associations to Ngai Tahu. Hutchinson holds a diploma in textile printing and a Bachelor of Arts in 3D design and architecture from Unitec in Auckland and is a trained pattern maker. In 1999 she completed a Diploma of Education at the Christchurch College of Education. Hutchinson was the first Pacific woman artist to be awarded the prestigious Macmillan Brown Pacific Island artist-in-residence at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2000. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia, and her work has been acquired by public art galleries in Auckland and Christchurch, New Zealand.

Hutchinson has worked with an extensive range of media, including sculpture, painting, multimedia, installation art, film and performance. Her works express and comment on women's issues, their functions in daily life, their political and social struggles, and their roles within a colonial past. A number of her works have included cabin bread tapestries and installations using common materials found in Samoa. Hutchinson states, 'I'm influenced by my surroundings, the environment, society and politics, and issues to do with gender roles. I'm also interested in the hierarchical use of space, both internally and externally.'¹ Hutchinson explores the medium of building paper, combining her design and architectural knowledge to create works that are lyrical and delicate, yet also have a strong structural quality.

Paper-cutting has a long history, particularly in China, Japan, the Middle East, and Europe. Often regarded as a folk tradition, its common association to the decorative and the 'lesser' arts has made it a useful medium for certain contemporary artists to explore notions of hierarchy in history and present society. The work Cinco is bold and decorative. It saturates the wall space in a fluid, intricate manner, spreading out to five points from a seemingly endless central flower. Like a biological cell, others split from this flower and veer outwards, creating their own designs, losing their dark colour and becoming smaller. Aesthetically mesmerising with its delicate patterning, Cinco is the result of a research trip to Samoa in 2002 and is loaded with cultural significance.

Along with the two major Pacific artists Niki Hastings-McFall (represented in Queensland Art Gallery's Collection) and Lily Aitui Laita, Hutchinson studied the large, ancient, star-shaped rock structures that are prevalent in Samoa, as well as associated oral histories. Overtaken by weeds, these mounds are enigmas to Pacific historians and little information is known as to their purpose and meaning. Called tia seu lupe in Samoan, they are believed to have been platforms constructed for the chiefly sport of pigeon snaring.² Hutchinson described her experience with these mysterious formations as finding 'symbolic objects, which reflect the "va", a space as broad as one that exists between our Samoan hearts and the landscape saturated with the dialogue of our ancestors'.³ The work reflects Hutchinson's interest in architecture through its investigation of the distribution of space. By observing the delicate interplay between the materiality of the paper and the spaces that it creates or obliterates, Hutchinson is able to further explore the idea of the va (translating as 'a space between') and its many subtle Samoan metaphorical meanings.

Undoubtedly, Hutchinson has also drawn on the mesmerising pattern repetition occurring in the Samoan practices of weaving and siapo (tapa) for Cinco. The intermittent thick and slender paper cut-outs are equally reminiscent of tatau (tattoo) patterns that adorn male bodies. The title Cinco means 'five' in Portuguese, and refers to the five pointers in a star. It also alludes to Hutchinson's distant Portuguese heritage which is the result of one of the many colonial interventions in Samoa's history. When discussing this work, Hutchinson also refers to the missionaries' introduction of lace to Samoa, not only in clothing for church or other special occasions, but also in the decoration of their homes. Hutchinson particularly remembers the Catholic women in church wearing mantillas, black lace squares that covered their heads and flowed on to their shoulders. With her exploration of colonial and women's issues via the unusual medium of paper cut-outs, Hutchinson makes a distinctively strong statement about the different avenues contemporary Pacific and Maori art can take.

Endnotes

1. Lonnie Hutchinson, Artist statement, Pacific-bound: Pacific artists of Aotearoa/New Zealand at the 8th Festival of Pacific Art, Kanaky/Nouvelle-Caledonie 2000 for the Noumea Biennale, Creative New Zealand, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, unpaginated, 2000.
2. See DJ Herdrich, 'Towards an understanding of Samoan Start Mounds', Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 4, no. 100, pp.381–435.
3. Pandora Pereira Fulimalo, 'VAhine', Art New Zealand, no. 107, Winter 2003, p.52.