Where Art Meets Heart in Your Community
Work started on the Tauranga mural on Sunday 28 April, with an unveiling event last Saturday 4 May
• Farmlands announces first female artist, Erika Pearce as the next artist in the HeART of the Community project, celebrating rural New Zealand
• Set to celebrate Tauranga’s rich heritage of horticulture and its growing population
• Erika’s vibrant art is inspired by community, women, culture and nature New Zealand’s largest rural art collection that tells the stories of provincial communities is set to swell by one giant new painting.
Over the past two years Farmlands has been transforming some of its key properties around the country into living works of art.
So far, the project dubbed HeART of The Community has seen Farmlands commission nine enormous
murals in rural New Zealand towns a striking illustration of the co-operative’s commitment to rural
communities.
Each of these HeART of The Community murals depicts aspects of rural New Zealand and captures the local community’s spirit, history and environment.
Tauranga has been chosen as the next site . Now New Zealand’s fifth largest city and one of the country’s
fastest growing centres, Tauranga is the gateway to Mount Maunganui and home to a flourishing port. Putting the ‘plenty’ into Bay of Plenty, it’s also the Capital of Kiwifruit and Abode of Avocado.
The Tauranga mural will be painted on the side of Tauranga’s Farmlands store, on Taurikura Drive
off State Highway 36, during the first week of May.
Award winning artist Erika Pearcel began painting her work on Farmlands’ Tauranga store on Sunday April 28th
Erika Pearce is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer whose award winning artwork features in collections
around the world. Her work typically reflects her passion for community, culture, the role and contribution of women and the natural world. In this new work the culmination of extensive research, community involvement and guidance she will take her inspiration from Tauranga’s rich history of horticulture.
“I was really super excited to be invited to take part in this awesome project. I am really keen on the idea that I should ‘give back’ through my work and I love that I am getting the chance to engage with the Tauranga community,” says Pearce
-Farmslands Co-Operative
Lisa was born in Auckland at the start of the 1970s, living in a small campsite community on the North Shore called Browns Bay. She spent a significant part of her life with her grandparents, often hanging out at the beaches. Lisa has many happy memories from those days at Browns Bay beach, where fish were plentiful on the point and the ocean was rich in seaweed. She played in the water for hours, going home totally “sun-kissed.” “An adorable time to grow up,” Lisa tells me.
Lisa enjoyed many sports; she was a keen tennis player and netballer, playing in the top teams for her age right up until the family moved to Wellington. Lisa was fifteen years old, which unfortunately marked the end of her sporting career. Local teams were well established in Wellington, and her attention was drawn elsewhere.