PROVENANCE Private Collection, Wellington Purchased from Page Blackie Wellington, 2013

EXHIBITED Star Gossage - Page Blackie, 2013 Mau Ahua - Portraits by Contemporary Maori Artists, New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Wellington 5th November 2016 - 14th February 2017

Star Gossage (Ngāti Wai / Ngāti Ruanui) lives and paints on ancestral land at Pakiri Beach, surrounded by her whanau. She studied film and drama in Otago, making her acting debut in The Feathers of Peace.

Gossage takes her inspiration from the coastal landscape of rural Pakiri, mixing local clay and ochres with oil paints to create the earthy muted colours that have become one of her signatures. Her emotionally intense paintings often feature dream-like tupuna figures.

Although Gossage has exhibited regularly throughout New Zealand and overseas, it was the ground- breaking and critically acclaimed Five Maori Painters exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, curated by Ngahiraka Mason, that cemented her significance as one of the most important Maori artists of her generation.

Kia Tau Ake Tonu features the artist and her daughter.