An Interview with Jack Trolove and Stevei Houkāmau

ArticleWellington

1 Jan

Webb’s Wellington will be presenting two concurrent solo shows by Jack Trolove and Stevei Houkāmau from 17.06.25 — 12.07.25. At first sight, their work seems diametrically opposed but for all the differences in the visual style they are both concerned with mark making, storytelling, and much more. We spoke to the artists.

Holding Stories is a celebration of artistry that invites audiences to explore complex dialogues around identity, culture, and the shared human experience. Join us in reflecting on how these two artists, through their unique practices, illuminate the interconnectedness of our stories, materials, and the land we inhabit.

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An Interview with Jack Trolove and Stevei Houkāmau

Kia ora rā kōrua, Stevie and Jack! It is exciting to have both of your ‘solo’ shows happening concurrently at Webb’s Wellington. How would you explain your work to someone not familiar with it?

Jack Trolove (JT): I tried to explain to the rural post person the other day, and found myself saying that I make big sticky paintings that get feelings.

Stevei Houkāmau (SH): This isn’t as simple a question as it seems! Although I use uku (clay) as my main medium, I don't regard myself as a ceramic artist as I am not formally trained in ceramics. The way I like to explain it is that I use uku like skin, I approach each object or vessel as if it is a being and I look to bring out the beauty and stories for that entity. I guess a way you can imagine it is that I get to tā moko (mark) Papatūānuku every day.

Bringing out an already existing entity sounds like something your works does as well, Jack. The faces you paint are not of real people, where do you draw your inspiration from?

JT: This question about real-ness is an interesting one. In many Western traditions of portraiture, painting is a reference point for something real, it’s not the real thing. I’m intentionally working with and against the tropes of portraiture and drag — creating faces in the slippage, in the third space, the trans space, looking for what becomes real in the painting.

I’m really curious about our obsession with individuality in Pākeha culture, where this comes from, why our artforms uphold it, and what we can dismantle when we re-route our practices into relational and interdependent forms. Because of this thinking, my paintings have been intentional fabrications in past years, albeit with particular genealogies — works that look like portraits of ‘a’ person, but are created from a mixture of starting points, including real people (more than one), imagined and dreamed forms, and information like colour and temperature gathered from other places (the sky before it buckets down gives the blue-grey under an eye). I’ve thought of them as constellations rather than individuals.

Your practices are very different in terms of materiality and themes but there are also a few similarities. For starters, that physical connection to medium, that tactility of your materials is a crucial part of your oeuvre. Am I correct?

SH: This connects back to my first answer, as a Māori Uku artist I work with Papatūānuku (Mother Earth) every day, that relationship with the O.G. mother as I like to think of her is very personal and is not just part of my practice but a part of my everyday life. As an atua wahine (female god) her role within Te Ao Māori is so important and for me she is the main attraction in my own work. Through her I am able to tell the stories of my whakapapa, of our people as well as revive old traditions and korero. She also teaches me, guides me and grounds me within myself, my practice and my whakapapa. By choosing to use uku it allows me the ability to convey our links to the geological and spiritual past – uniting tāngata, tūpuna, and whenua, while speaking to the critical connection tangata whenua have to place and earth.

JT: I’ve been thinking about this actually, about how in reality our materials are actually similar. We both work with a version of ground earth or pigment, and then a binder. Even synthetic pigments come from earth at one point. The earth Stevei works with is bound with water and mine is bound with oil.

When people talk about being ‘water and oil’ they refer to how these elements don’t mix, how they hold their own forms. I think this show will be in some ways a celebration of earth holding its form (and therefore its stories) in particular ways. Songs and stories are alive in our materials as much as the ideas. While our practices are different, we’re also both hand-making story holders out of ground earth in one way or another.

There is also a lot of warmth and sometimes joy in both your oeuvres, right?

JT: In terms of the mood of a painting, that seems to be up to where the painting wants to go. Sometimes they are intense or full of grief but yeah other times one will come through that is blissing or bubbly even. I can feel those ones coming because they always want all the pretty colours even if I’m trying to take us somewhere else — those ones refuse to be serious. I’m grateful to these though, they end up being a kind of rongoā for me while they’re in the studio.

SH: The main theme of my work is whakapapa which examines the connections and relationships that move across time and space. This also allows me to look at other ways to express whakapapa, to deconstruct it and convey it in ways that others can connect to the stories and objects. By also revisiting old or lost traditions as I like to explain it, it allows me to revive stories, knowledge and connections to objects in a way that we have lost due to colonisation, modernisation and materialism. Through the markings, or carved surfaces I am also able to convey visual language encoded with knowledge, genealogy and connect with legacies of Māori making, migration from Te Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa, and kinship ties with atua.

Jack, there is something quite instinctual about your process. I have read that your work has to be made quickly, decisions of where you put your mark can’t be undone and you have to finish the whole painting in a relatively short time before oil paints start to dry… What do you think this process adds to the end result?

JT: I think that working in this way keeps the work energetic, it keeps the life in the marks and forces me to think through my body, not be in my head. I can be a real perfectionist, which is a killer for paintings. The process I use forces me to commit to the painting and let it crash or survive or do whatever it needs to do — so yes, that process is like a recipe for the level of presence we both need.

Liminality, transitions, frontier-dwelling are all strong themes in your work, why do you find those so inspiring and how does that filter into your pieces?

JT: This is a great question, I think that in and of itself the creative process is all of these things. It’s working between the veils sometimes but also in a really practical way it’s working in that space where nothing exists yet, but also every possibility is there. Pure potential. That’s why creativity can be terrifying if we’re not in a good relationship with it, or try to control or pre-empt it. I end up in this knot more than I’d like to. It’s hideously humbling and wildly alive simultaneously. It’s that tricky magic that calls me into the studio though, even when I’m tired.

The other reason I centre these ideas of liminality and transitions is because I want to uplift the preciousness of transitions, or trans-ness. Right now in particular there is a brutal push against our trans and gender diverse communities existing and thriving (some people have forgotten we’ve been here forever) — and so I use my practice to explore, uplift and celebrate the ‘trans’ qualities our communities bring into the world — these deeper contributions which are often missed in a culture of spectacle.

As an artist, I get to explore ‘trans’ as a verb rather than an identity. I get to ask questions like what does transness look or feel like inside painting or choreography? What does it look or feel like inside other threshold practices like keening, drag, grief work or midwifery?

In painting, this can look like works which show themselves ‘in process’ — a canvas surface which is half painted, half unpainted, paused in that moment of ‘becoming’, in that precious ‘trans state’. It can also look like paintings made to ‘work twice’ creating a binary or double-image (one abstract, one figurative), which require people to physically move around them to find each image, dissolving this binary with their bodies as they move. Transness doesn’t only exist in a silo of gender, it's a form of embodiment everyone experiences; ageing is a transition. Birth and death are transitions. Creativity is transition. We all have inroads to understand this precious form, this creative gold.

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What can audiences expect from your upcoming show?

SH: I am still in the middle of creating a body of work for this exhibition. As above, the core kaupapa of my work always comes from whakapapa and exploring ways to convey whakapapa. I will have a few sculptural works, and also adornment for the walls which I love to call my “Taonga for the Atua” series. I haven’t exhibited often in Wellington so I am excited to show a range of my work and where I am as an artist and a maker since last showing in Wellington.

JT: In this show many of the works are at least partially recognisable as particular people. I’m still feeling out how I feel about this (!) In any case, the paintings are still their own forms — the people who began them are those close enough in my life to gift this intimacy and exchange, and, like actors or dancers perhaps, are open to their forms reforming into a third space. The paintings are still in the realm of the third space.