With her art group FAFSWAG, Pati Tyrell has toured the world showcasing Pacific art. In the third installment of our Art Work, he talks about the ups and downs of creating content for a global audience.
Pati Solomona Tyrell is a multidisciplinary artist focusing on performance, video and photography. He is a founding member of the art group FAFSWAG, which received the Art Laureate award in 2020. In 2018, he was shortlisted for the Walters Prize, New Zealand’s highest contemporary art award. This year FAFSWAG traveled to Manchester for an arts festival, and Tyrell Tulounga’s short film Le Lagi was selected as a finalist in the New Zealand International Arts’ Festival’s Ngā Whanaunga Māori Pasifika Shorts competition.
His ‘average’ work week
To be honest, it is a lot of admin work, because we are working on several international projects. I just came back from Germany – I was there giving my short film at the film festival – so we often communicate with people on the other side of the world.
The time difference is annoying because it usually means Zoom meetings after 11pm in New Zealand. Recently I have been feeling a little sleepy in this sense trying to keep the same time with our work abroad. This can look like anything from writing a financial proposal to writing a budget.
I’m the main contact person with FAFSWAG during their stay in Manchester at the end of June, so a lot of it goes back and forth around the plane, around the invoices. I don’t know how to quantify the amount of time I spend on this. It takes a few hours of my day, depending on what they have requested in terms of information, and then I have to coordinate with my people, FAFSWAG members, which are 10 people, and say “Hey, can we all look at this information. , is this okay?” for all of us?”
If you think about trying to monitor a lot of people, and then taking all that from the group and bringing it back to the monitoring group on the other side of the world who might be sleeping at the time, and then waiting for that to come back and then doing that process back and forth. That takes up a lot of my day.
In terms of my fine art skills I haven’t made anything notable since 2016, which was Fāgogo, a work that entered the Walters (Prize) and has created a career that spans the past six years. Now, I’m in a lot of research that focuses on artists and artists, historians, dancers, and spend a lot of time in different groups like museums and libraries.
What it takes to create a project with FAFSWAG
If we are doing well, we try to keep the nine to five hours. Our latest example might be Documenta. We hired a place for five weeks, so we used it as our base and everyone comes from 9am, and depending on what we are working on, we start drawing, start making, dress up or just write or think. work.
Tanu (Gago) is kind of our main actress, and she takes a lot of weight to prepare everyone. Not everyone is a full-time artist, so people have their own 9 to 5 game that goes on every day and most of the times we have. [full time artists] – so me, Tanu and sometimes Elyssia (Ra’nee Wilson-Heti) – have a lot of time to do a lot of administrative work. So trying to get us in the same room is very difficult. Working around everyone’s schedules is one of the hardest things.
We’ve been together for almost 10 years now and we were a group of friends who wanted to create art together, but now that everyone’s grown up, have families and are climbing the ladder in their lives, it’s really hard to just be with everyone. other.
In one of our recent songs, we thought “What if the goal was to try to have more time?” That is our national goal, to spend time together, and then we can gather together for these great international projects.
We know that everyone’s strengths at FAFSWAG work are different, and that it is very difficult, as is our mental health. There was a moment at the end of 2018 where we went back and forth. It was ridiculous, so it’s no wonder now everyone wants to chill and hang out because at the end of the day we’re a group of friends who have the same skills to bring us together.
How important international projects are to his work
FAFSWAG has not been active across the country, we have been taking our responsibilities internationally. This year we have Manchester from June to July, come back for 10 days, then fly to Bangkok. We’re there for two weeks and then we’re doing our 10th anniversary show at the end of September. Then, depending on our money, we will go to Canada ImagineNATIVE for two weeks.
What support has been necessary
I was lucky last year to get funding for my research, which helped me survive that year.
We are trying to establish FAFSWAG as a business, so this comes with looking for lawyers and accountants, and trying to find a real place to work. We have been working in-house for the past 10 years, creating both film and digital projects – all in one room. We’re working abroad, and we’re working at home, it’s ridiculous.
The hardest part of the work week
Admin is. It’s a very boring thing. As an aspiring artist, you want to be on the creative path and you want to be doing it but you have to do the admin.
Maybe [also] check your bank. Checking your bank account and realizing “Oh, maybe I need to do something else.” We recently created a budget as part of our business plan to see what our weekly and monthly expenses looked like, and we realized how much money we needed to keep up, and it was shocking.
Which would make his life as an artist easier
The thing that would make it easier, just to know how I listen to the audience, maybe people understand the importance of art and how it works. Especially photography – someone once asked me if I could shoot a wedding for $300, and I was like “what?”. It’s the same contradiction of what my art is.
Who is doing $300 weddings? He’s crazy!
Which makes it worth it
The ability to express and create in the world the creativity that we have in our minds.
I just came back from a meeting where we were talking about how we can’t be financially stable people in our families, but the experiences that art allows us to have, especially when we think about international travel – there’s a lot of art that I’ve met all over Europe, across America and Asia .
– As told by Sam Brooks
#Pati #Tyrell #answers #call #world
