An art sale has been set up in Tonga as an outlet for Tongan creatives to keep producing work during the lockdown. 

A huge part of the market has been impacted since border closures and tourists are no longer going to the kingdom plus the dedicated art gallery 'Tanoa Hotel' that showcased local art is currently closed as it is a quarantine facility for repatriated Tongan nationals returning from overseas.

So a group of five artists are coming together to sell their art work to help them get by.  One of the artist is Tanya Edwards joins us via telephone from Tonga. 

 

Tanya it's a challenging time for everyone globally but how has is impacted the art community esp those whose main source of income is from their art work? 

The art sale is a way of giving our local artists a continued platform to exhibit and sell work and I've also noticed that with no one travelling at the moment, there are people here with a little more disposable income who have been very supportive of buying local, which is so great!

We've had quite a lot of interest since Friday, and being able to post photos of the work online has meant that we've had a lot of interest from overseas too.

Our only problem at this stage is selling online - Facebook marketplace doesn't recognise Tongan banks and currency and the banks here are not currently set up for us to do online payments.

Unless you have a bank account in NZ for people to pay to, it's a case of relying on money transfers and telegraphic transfers which are expensive.

We also only have one flight per week to send items so there is no such thing as overnight shipping!

Our next show to work towards is a celebration of Matariki, which is supported by the NZ high commission here, I think that is late June.

 If you need any more info please let me know, I've also just posted some more photos on Facebook if you need to get a feel for the type of work we are showing.

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