When you’re step­ping into Te Papa’s new gal­lery space Toi Art, be pre­pared for some­thing a little dif­fer­ent from your stand­ard gal­lery exper­i­ence. Toi Art is a gal­lery space 20 years in the mak­ing, it takes over two floors of Te Papa and the new entrance gal­lery is lar­ger than any space at Te Papa. I spent over an hour just explor­ing the first floor so this is my first floor story.

20 years ago, Parade, one of Te Papa’s open­ing exhib­i­tions fea­tured Colin McCahon’s ‘North­land Pan­els’ squished between an old tele­vi­sion set play­ing ads and a refri­ger­at­or, so I hoped for some next level thought­ful but dif­fer­ent. Michael Parekowhai’s latest pro­ject Détour deliv­ers. He’s mined the museum’s art, his­tory, Taonga Māori and archive col­lec­tions, mixed old, bor­rowed and new works amongst a forest of plastic trees. I was taken by ‘The B‑E-T-T‑Y waist­coat’ by Mar­cel Duch­amp and its com­pan­ion work ‘Le très joli gilet aka cor­pus’ – a waist­coat Michael Parekow­hai com­mis­sioned design­er Kate Sylvester to cre­ate. Duchamp’s waist­coat was designed for his friend Juli­us Isaacs with the but­tons spelling the name of Isaacs’s wife. Sylvester’s waist­coat has the name M‑I-K-E‑P, spelled out by but­tons. It’s art you know but not as you know it, but it’s how I love it.

Lisa walker’s jew­ellery ret­ro­spect­ive Lisa Walk­er: I want to go to my bed­room but I can’t be bothered, made me smile, she has a real skill in mix­ing medi­ums and is also an amaz­ing advoc­ate for jew­ellery to be viewed as art. I really enjoyed two pieces that both chal­lenged the idea of jew­ellery . ‘Neck­lace from 2016’ is con­struc­ted using five fluffy duck­lings and a recently com­mis­sioned over­sized piece uses old Te Papa floor tiles. What wall is not improved with a bit of jew­ellery? Head up stairs in Toi Art and you’ll see the inspir­a­tion for Te Papa floor in Mikyla Dwyer­’s ‘Wall Neck­lace’.

Fin­ish­ing off floor one is a cel­eb­ra­tion of fash­ion, per­form­ance, film and art that is the power­ful Pacific Sis­ters: Fash­ion Act­iv­ists. Greet­ing you and maybe(?) act­ing as a kaitiaki of the exhib­i­tion is a piece com­mis­sioned for Te Papa’s open­ing 20 years ago – yet again the cur­at­ors have done this won­der­ful thing of tying the past to the present & it’s the stor­ies like this with­in Toi Art’s open­ing I’ve truly appre­ci­ated. The kaitiaki is made from found and recycled mater­i­als, with a heavy emphas­is of video tape (unlike a craft pro­ject or Pro­ject Run­way it all feels pur­pose­ful) and she sets the story for what you’ll find inside, a col­lec­tion of videos, pho­to­graphy and gar­ments cre­ated by the Pacific Sis­ters art col­lect­ive. I wanted to reach out and touch everything and lucky for me one sec­tion has samples of mater­i­als used so you get the whole look and feel. Accom­pa­ny­ing the exhib­i­tion is a Spo­ti­fy playl­ist so you can get a feel for the fash­ion parade/dance party that is a Pacific Sis­ters event. Like everything in Toi Art  where pos­sible everything is lis­ted in Māori first, then Eng­lish. It’s very small unnotice­able but import­ant touches like this that make me appre­ci­ate Te Papa’s new space.

Détour by Michael Parekow­hai is runs till 4 Nov 2018

Pacific Sis­ters: Fash­ion Act­iv­ists runs till 8 July 2018

Lisa Walk­er: I want to go to my bed­room but I can’t be bothered runs till 22 July 2018

Toi Art is 2 floors of Te Papa and may it run forever