Niki Hastings-McFall

Niki Hastings-McFall
Born	1959
Education	Manukau Institute of Technology, Bachelor of Visual Arts (Jewellery)
Known for	Jewellery, fine art

Niki Hastings-McFall (born 1959) is a New Zealand jeweller and artist of Samoan and Pākehā descent. She has been described by art historian Karen Stevenson as one of the core members of a group of artists of Pasifika descent who brought contemporary Pacific art to 'national prominence and international acceptance'.

In 2000 Hastings-McFall graduated from the Manukau Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Visual Arts majoring in Jewellery. Much of her work references her Samoan heritage, which she began learning about when she first met her father in 1992.

Hastings-McFall's work has been informed by her experience of growing up within Pakeha culture and later learning about her Samoan heritage. Among the issues that inform her work are 'the effects of Christianity and colonialism in the Pacific, loss of culture, the transplantation of Pacific Islanders to large cities and the shaping of traditional culture to fit contemporary urban culture'.

Although she began making jewellery, Hastings-McFall found within a few years that she needed to extend beyond this:

'I found it [jewellery] brought up other things I wanted to explore. I was really interested in jewellery, researching and exploring, but that led to other things I couldn't do with jewellery. I wanted to make objects without the whole conversation about body adornment. Today there are definitely elements of jewellery and jewellery-making in my work. I don't deny it or repress it. I've always been inclined to making objects about ideas.'

Hastings-McFall's work often references cultural stereotyping of the Pacific through the use of everyday material objects. She makes frequent use of the flower lei, either buying cheap nylon lei and using the 'petals' to cover furniture and lightboxes, or making lei from non-traditional materials, such as the nylon thread used in weedeaters, or the fish-shaped soy sauce bottles that come with take-away sushi packs, which 'carry on the tradition of Pacific adoption of modern materials like plastic in customary forms as well as commenting on the economic traditions of Pacific Island peoples in urban Aotearoa New Zealand'.

Karen Stevenson writes of Hastings-McFall's lei works:

Hastings-McFall finds much to parody in the contemporary lives of Pacific Islanders as they encounter the stereotypes of the Western gaze. Hastings-McFall's humour is the basis and inspiration for her Urban Lei Series. Using McDonald's throwaways (MacLei), curtain nets (Nosy Neighbour Lei), weedeater nylon (Islanders) and soy sauce containers (Too Much Sushi Lei), Hastings-McFall addresses the lived island and urban realities of New Zealand.

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