The richly textured surfaces of Tracy Keith’s raku fired ceramics contain the imprints of abstracted shapes and patterns. His work is informed by the way ancestral relationships with the whenua are often disrupted or fractured by the need to move away from one's turakawaewae. He says his works “come from a place of memory for me, where they are parts of the earth or areas of the whenua I remember or that I have experienced. I want to capture the deep rawness and movement of uku, where material informs practice and the raku process defines the outcome, where vessels look as if they were pulled from the earth.”

whenua ~ land, placenta

tūrakawaewae ~ place where one has rights of residence and belonging through kinship and whakapapa

uku ~ clay