A vessel landed on another shore

in their veins, traversing the Pacific. Maybe that’s where my love of our ocean and my interest in the vessels and architecture of the region come from. So, the first time I went to this church, it wasn’t a Gothic arch or hands clasped in prayer I saw, it was the bow of a boat or prow of a vaka (canoe is such an inadequate translation). Maybe this was because I’d just seen Christchurch Art Gallery’s fabulous exhibition , full of the inspiring art of young Pacific people. Robin White and Ruha Fifita’s tapa collaboration, , takes the same pointed arch form, representing both window and vaka, escorted by eel and flying fish, and loads it with symbols, tipped with a glass lamp. In both that tapa and the new Tuvaluan church by South Pacific Architecture, one can see similar expressions of navigation and connection, sustenance