Ka rere atu te au, ka rere mai te tai ‘the river flows out, the tide surges in.’
Te Maori the influential blockbuster 1980s exhibition, that travelled to prestigious museums in the United States (1984-1985) and returned triumphantly to Aotearoa (1986-1987), is an important compass point for the book MAORI ART: History, Architecture, Landscape and Theory. As a focal point for cultural orthodoxy and ideas about ‘classical’ Māori art it resonates discussions within such as the chapter ‘Raruraru ki te puna: trouble at the spring’ (pp.138-173). This portion of the publication looked at the challenges surrounding the legacy of the Māori parliamentarian Sir Āpirana Ngata. The book examined the indigenous/crown related focus on the protection and repetition of orthodox cultural formulae versus the propensity of a culture to be open to change, innovation and renewal. A not dissimilar response is offered here in relation to a recent blog on the ‘Toi Maori Aotearoa’ web site regarding Te Maori. It is an influential exhibition of taonga rightly celebrated four decades on from its first showing. Te Maori embodies a key visual legacy that continues to raise important questions and challenges with which audiences must still grapple even now in the twenty-first century.
The same year as te hokinga mai ‘the returning’ Sir Hirini Moko Mead, former Editor of the accompanying Te Maori catalogue, noted this important late twentieth century exhibition was, ‘…a breakthrough of some significance, a grand entrance into the big world of international art. We had suddenly become visible.’ On the ‘Toi Maori Aotearoa’ website more recently Mead is quoted as similarly observing, the Te Maori era was the first time Māori art was brought out of the shadows into the light. I think this statement, regarding the visibility of taonga, requires a little more unpackaging. Yes the scale of the Te Maori display and the widespread participation and support of ngā tāngata whenua in major American museums and at home was surely unprecedented. 202,000 viewers saw the show at the Metropolitan Museum in New York alone and there were even larger audiences in some of the other Saint Louis, San Francisco and Chicago (621,000 visitors) venues. However, this international exposure was comparatively brief comprising 1984-1985 in the United States and a return to New Zealand cities in 1986 and 1987. Since the nineteenth century there have been, as Mead is aware, many exhibitions of Māori taonga, meetinghouses and pātaka in overseas museums and international expositions.
The eventual display (1925-2024) of Ruatepūpuke II (Tokomaru Bay) in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, since it was purchased from J.F.G Umlauff, a Hamburg dealer in ethnographic objects in 1905, is one obvious example. The display of Ngāti Tūhourangi’s Hinemihi carved in the 1880s by Wero Tāroi and Tene Waitere and standing since 1892 in Clandon Park, Surrey in Lord Onslow’s estate is another. Tene Waitere’s Rauru (1897-1900) now in the Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg another. So also is the Ngāti Awa house Mataatua opened in 1875 and sent by the New Zealand Government to many different venues including the Sydney International Exhibition (1879) the Melbourne International Exhibition (1880 – where around 1.5 million people are said to have attended), the South Kensington Museum (later Victoria and Albert) where it was stored for 40 years before being re-erected for the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley (1824-1825) and finally on permanent display at the Otago Museum prior to its long overdue return to its rightful Ngāti Awa owners in Whakatāne. Museum collections: Auckland’s Ngāti Maru whare whakairo Hotunui, the pataka Te Puawai o te Arawa carved by Ngāti Tarawhai tohunga whakairo Wero Tāroi and others and the waka taua Te Toki-a-Tapiri built originally by Ngāti Kahungunu for Rongowhakaata, the gallery portrait collections of Lindauer and Goldie of tūpuna (that also hang to the side of Hotunui), like Ruatepūpuke II in Chicago, all continue to speak to their viewers – ki te ao, ki te pō.
(l-r) Te Potaka, Te Kaha pātaka carvings, 18th century, Maraenui and the 19th century Te Puawai o Te Arawa pātaka built for Ngāti Pikiao rangatira Pokiha Taranui and Ngāti Awa's wedding gift the Hotunui whare whakairo. Māori Hall, Auckland Museum, 2017
International hui involving stakeholders, including Tokomaru Bay kaumatua Phil Aspinall (far right) and Regenstein Curator of Pacific Anthropology Dr John Terrell (to his left) discussing the future display and interpretation of the meeting house within which they are sitting. The Field was a major venue and the closing location for the American tour of Te Maori. Ruatepūpuke II, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 2005. Photo: Rangihīroa
In the 1990s Darcy Ria, a Rongowhakaata kaumatua, clarified the value and the audience of tribal taonga within the context of museums. His point of reference is Te Hau-ki-Tūranga carved by Ngāti Kaipoho rangatira ko Raharuhi Rukupō (c.1800s-1873) around 1842. Speaking about the shift of his tribal whare whakairo from its earlier Buckle Street premises to its current Wellington waterfront location Ria thinks expansively about the building’s audiences,
‘[I]t [i.e Te Hau-ki-Tūranga] is being displayed not only to New Zealand but to the whole world…’
Darcy Ria, Rongowhakaata
All of these contexts (some now exclusively Māori – some regional, some national – others international) were and are, just like Te Maori, carefully engineered, designed and interpreted expositions of taonga in their respective locations. They all involve, being seen by hundreds of thousands of visitors in many different historical eras and some for much longer periods of display.
So then what is it that might distinguish Te Maori? Is it not the scale of Māori participation along with the added impact of key Pākehā and tauiwi partnerships (especially those connected with or involving museums and associated institutions and professions)? Te Maori was initiated in the 1970s by an American museum professional, Douglas Newton (1921-2001), Director, Department of Primitive Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Paul Cotton a Pākehā New Zealand Consul General in New York at the time. They both had, what for that particular era was, a radical vision for Māori participation in an exhibition of taonga. The longer legacy I’ve suggested with other major expositions of Māori art involved taonga being spoken ‘about’ by tauiwi. With Te Maori one witnesses an unusual paradigmatic shift with an authentic context being provided for Māori to talk ‘to’ their treasures and perhaps as Newton might have claimed a stage for taonga to kōrero to their audiences. Note, for example, Newton’s progressive comment that,
‘Te Maori should not just be an exhibition of beautiful objects…but a voice for which we supplied the theatre.’
Douglas Newton, Metropolitan Museum, NY
Having met Cotton kanohi ki te kanohi ‘face to face’ (Bernice Murphy, Chief Curator later Director of MCA Sydney sent me to him to pitch support for a Trans-Tasman Māori art exhibition ‘Hawaiki : Last Homeland’ planned in the 1990s) I am equally persuaded the tautoko of both professionals was central in helping facilitate the beginnings of Te Maori and, ‘…its rightful place of equality among the achievements of the great civilisations of the past throughout the world’ (Newton, 1986). Newton had a very particular curatorial vision for the display of objects in Te Maori. He also believed in the wairua of Pacific and global indigenous treasures. Any image of the show demonstrates a distinctive handling of space and lighting already acknowledged in his design of the Michael C Rockfeller Wing at the Metropolitan just two years prior to Te Maori opening. Take, for example, the weighty Broadway production-like design elements that structure the viewers experience of the entrance area to the Metropolitan display of Te Maori.1 The labelling of the Pukeroa Waharoa as ‘THE FORT’ and to its left the Te Kaha pātaka as ‘The STOREHOUSE’ powerfully dividing and naming space, channeling visitors and conceptualising the idea of places to defend and of a location to retain or to store precious objects (i.e taonga) is one obvious aesthetic example.
Sir Kingi Matutaera Ihaka leads rangatira and museum dignitaries at the Dawn opening ceremony, Te Maori, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 11 September 1984. In the background, behind Uncle Matu, is Te Whānau-ā-Apanui Te Potaka the dark looming Te Kaha pātaka. Photo: Mobil
The claim then made by ‘Toi Maori Aotearoa’ that Sir Sidney Mead was the Curator of Te Maori is a little puzzling since the publication itself offers clear descriptions of which particular roles were carried out and by whom.
In addition to acting as a consultant in the selection of objects, Professor Mead served as general editor of this book…Mr Simmons (Ethnologist Auckland Museum) served as co-selector with Mr. Newton.’
It was Newton and Simmons (1930-2015) who were the Curators of Te Maori and the selectors of the objects. Mead was consulted and primarily worked as Editor on the valuable accompanying publication ‘…enlisting the other authors and contributing two of the essays.’ (Wilder Green, Director, The American Federation of the Arts, acknowledgements, Te Maori catalogue, 1984: 15).
Further, there are differences between Newton’s exhibition concepts and Mead’s kaupapa explored in the catalogue for Te Maori. The plant metaphor, for example, that Mead employs in his iconic ‘Becoming Māori’ essay innovatively adapts archaeological and western renaissance art historical models (the latter perhaps unknowingly) to form a new chronology for Māori art that importantly has a Māori feel to it. It follows a similar, though not quite the same, path to Newton’s ideas explored in the American institutions.
It is important to balance this tautoko offered by Pākehā with the claims made for the show. Te Maori involved the full range of theatre Newton’s comment introduces. The Metropolitan and the other prestigious American and Aotearoa museums did indeed provide the stage for ngā tāngata whenua challenging, activating, interpreting, educating and keeping warm the taonga. Ka awhi mai ngā kaumātua me ngā kui me ngā rangatahi hoki ki te hokinga mai o tēnei whakaahuatanga. Ka tangi rātou ki ēnei taonga, ka hoatu rātou ngā whakaaro hōhonu ki tā mātou taringa e tō ana. Kua tuhituhi a Tā Sidney Mead mō te ihi, te wehi me te wana o ēnei taonga tuku iho. Kōina te kōrero nei – ko Te Maori he kōha no ngā tūpuna ki te Ao Marama, ki te Ao tūroa me Aotearoa nei.
This detail is of the right hand maihi 'bargeboard' panel of the Te Kaha pātaka, Caretakers of taonga: Auckland Museum. This was the taonga to which I contributeded kōrero as a kaiarahi at Te Māori Auckland Art Gallery. Our role was to guide visitors as they moved around the exhibition during its final display. I was 23 at the time and completing my Masters Art History thesis research on ‘Paratene Te Mokopuorongo Matchitt: Maori Art in a Contemporary Form and Context’ (UoA,1988). Many rangatahi and pakeke from different iwi briefly performed this same role of kaiarahi mō te whakaaturanga o Te Maori ki Tāmaki Makaurau i June – September 1987.
Te Maori exhibition display, Metropolitan Museum, New York, September 1984- January 1985
Even as one of dozens of kaiarahi ‘docents’, partly prepped by Sir Sidney Mead for the last Te Maori venue, I felt enormous pride in talking to visitors about the Te Kaha pātaka (see image of Māori Hall, Auckland Museum and far left in the Metropolitan dawn ceremony opening image above). Ae marika! On reflection an unusual taonga to pick for someone affiliated with Te Tai Tokerau. Perhaps if I had done my thesis on Selwyn Murupaenga (1937-2024) I would have spoken to the waka ko iwi from the Te Tai Tokerau rohe. Hei aha. The lack of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui whakapapa was balanced by the artist Paratene Te Mokopuorongo Matchitt (1933-2021) agreeing to support my research which centrally involved Te Potaka.
There have been at least two major phases of redefining the Te Kaha pataka involving very different approaches. One can be seen in Sir Āpirana Ngata’s encouragement of John Taiapa’s Rotorua School team to revive a copy of the ancestral template in the tribal whare Tūkākī at Te Kaha begun prior to World War II and completed in 1943. The second less straight-forward redefinition took place throughout the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. I am referring here to the almost subconscious presence of the Rotorua School copy, Tūkākī, and rangatahi grew up with the tribal icon on their doorstep. While Matchitt told me he was too young to be allowed into the area where te toi whakairo ‘woodcarving’ the house is part of his East Coast experience. The same indebtedness to the tradition can be found the work of kinsman Clifford Whiting (1936-2017). In Matchitt’s work the figurative elements in his art resonate the handling of both sculptural form and surface pattern – the strongest features of this premier eighteenth century ancestral taonga (see footnote reference below). Matchitt himself was always clear on the path ahead for developing his own mahi toi,
‘…the answer is still [to be foundin basic Māori concepts to be discovered, absorbed and cherished.’
E kōrero ana a Paratene Matchitt kei roto i tetuhinga whakapae, Panoho, ‘The Development of Māori Art in a Contemporary Form and Context’ MA thesis UoA, 1988
Discovering the context for these cherished connections came with the artist’s approval, and the written support of others like Ngāti Porou ki Harataunga me Ngāti Manu artist/educator John Hovell (1937-2014). My enquiries led to travel around Te Tai Rawhiti mārae living and working with and amongst Matchitt’s whānau in Te Kaha and throughout te motu 1986-1987. Considering whakapapa and the inter-tribal relationships of tā tātou tūpuna it would probably be politically incorrect today for a descendant of Puhi to speak to such a prestigious Te Tai Rawhiti taonga. However, my memories of the trepidatious pitopito kōrero inside Auckland Art Gallery are quite different. There were Te Whānau-ā-Apanui rangatira looking on. I remember, in particular, Wiremu Karuwhau Tāwhai (1933-2010 – Principal – Te Kaha Area School) encouraging me to share my knowledge. It wasn’t me that was important, it was my connection to his kinsman Paratene that gave me the nod,
‘We consider him still very much a part of us. He’s our [i.e Te Whānau-ā-Apanui] artist, we’re proud of him…he comes from us…’
Wiremu Tāwhai, 1986 (Panoho, ‘Maori Art in a Contemporary Form & Context’, UoA, MA thesis 1988)
So what might this small incident in the last showing of Te Maori teach me? Well it wasn’t pity, more recognition. Encouraging me Tāwhai was really acknowledging his whānaunga Paratene, his mother Harata and all the other tātai concerning the Matchitt whānau, Tūkākī mārae me tana Pāpa ko Hubert Matchitt, te papa whenua Taumata Kahawai te mea, te mea, te mea. There was also the importance of Apanui Ringamutu’s gift of taowaru and manaia i tuku iho (brought back from Hīngāngāroa’s whare wānanga Te Rāwheoro at Ūawa) mō ngā uri whakatipu.2
Both Tawhai, and other East Coast leaders, understood (1986-1988) the Te Kaha pātaka was an important component in this research regarding what had been absorbed and what was cherished and he was aware there were no other tauira ‘students’ of Māori ethnicity in the specific discipline of art history researching Māori art at a Masters level at that time. Similarly when Cotton and Newton began their discussions and their invitations around an exhibition of taonga, earlier in the 1970s, they were clearly pioneering something new, something which transcended the cultural and institutional practices of their museum institutions in America.
One does not have to reinvent this history that recognises the importance of other diverse contributors. Many people contributed to Te Maori: hapū and iwi members connected with taonga – ngā rangatira me ngā rangatahi, museum professionals, tauiwi, Pākehā, and both ordinary and prestigious (including political, civic and religious, business, transport, sponsorship, media and academic) leaders. All these people – tātou tātou – helped make the groundbreaking exhibition Te Maori the widely acknowledged and lovingly remembered show it has become. Te Maori, as Newton noted, truly lives and continues to reside in our collective conscious, me tā tātou manawa, as one of the world’s great shows.
Nau te rourou, naaku te rourou, ka ki te kete ‘with your basket and my basket, the kit is full’
Further, every exhibition has strengths and weaknesses including Māori shows in Aotearoa and abroad. As Māori we admire the strengths of these whakaaturanga. Hopefully I have demonstrated my aroha for this major influential late twentieth century exhibition. However, there is less fondness in accommodating the more problematic and challenging sides to exhibition legacies. Is it not possible that praise and honest reflection are banks along the same river, tributaries feeding the very same history? Pēnei whakaaro.
Te Maori was rightly criticised for not involving the work of women and for excluding the work of ‘living’ contemporary artists. Here’s what Kāi Tahu leader Sir Tipene O’Reagan wrote at the time of te hokinga mai o te whakaaturanga nui ki Aotearoa:
‘I feel saddened however that we have created the impression that Te Maori is the pinnacle of Māori artistic expression – in a sense the notion that the only good art is dead. That is balanced by my joy that also in the city at the same time are two major contemporary exhibitions of Māori art. The[se exhibitions] demonstrat[ed] that the artistic heritage of our people is very much alive and well and that is enormously important – that was missing overseas. We were seen very much as a past people. Our kaumātua would tangi over these objects and were seen as people looking to a past, when in fact our arts are something with which we live and continue to be nourished by.’
Sir Tipene O’Reagan
O’Reagan’s description of art continuing to replenish tā tātou hunga ora clarifies the omission. Whatever their reasons the Te Maori curators (Newton and Simmons) neglected to include the equally powerful whatu and raranga work practiced by great weaving dynasties like the nationally influential Ngāti Maniapoto whānau of renowned whatu masters Rangimarie Hetet (1892-1995) and daughter Diggeress Te Kanawa (1920-2009) nor Ngāti Tūhourangi master raranga weaver Emily Rangitiaria Schuster (1927-1997) and the Rotorua School’s equally important fibre art legacy. All these powerful gifted matriarchs were living practitioners at the time of Te Maori. The imbalance O’Reagan raises was addressed in several accompanying contemporary Māori art exhibitions hastily assembled to include the work of the living and of women artists and weavers greeting te hokinga mai o Te Maori. However, today is there an unfolding tradition of bias continuing ironically in the opposite direction?
I recently returned from viewing a 2024 exhibition of contemporary Māori art at the Queensland Museum of Modern Art in Brisbane exclusively featuring women artists. It suggested a very particular gender focus. The lesson from Te Maori is unnatural foci in the presentation of art potentially creates unnecessary tensions, imbalances, sub-cultural grievances and at times, as we shall see, strident calls for redress within the society itself.
One of my memorable interviews for MAORI ART: History, Architecture, Landscape and Theory was an early 1990s hui at the home of Alan Wīhongi (senior lecturer Māori design Wellington Polytechnic) with weaving artist Toi Te Rito Maihi (1937-2022). Her recollection of how she and other women, ‘…spent years travelling around the country sweeping floors, singing waiata and supporting the men [i.e. the artists] ...’ was impactful. However, does perhaps the recent prestigious Golden Lion award for some of our great weaving innovators, the Mataaho collective at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, help address this issue?
In an interview in 1994, barely a decade after Te Maori, Cliff Whiting, kaihautu for Te Papa Tongarewa at the time, mentioned to me the importance of he taurite ‘balance.’ He chose the whare whakairo ‘carved meetinghouse’ as his model emphasizing the way the whole design form was a balance of the weaving and carving roles within the tribal house and a kōrero whakarite for the roles men and women performed in the broader society.
There were other difficulties. Te Maori was partly sponsored by petroleum giant Mobil and the Aotea rohe (involving Taranaki and Whanganui) were unable to participate because Mobil was the owner of the synthetics fuel plant at Motunui near Waitara. This industrial complex was responsible for major pollution along the Waitara River and the kaawa ‘seafood gardens’ stretching along the nearby Taranaki takutai. Repeated polluting of mahinga kai constituted a serious breach of tikanga and tapū. Further this hara impeded ngā tāngata whenua from gathering once abundant kai moana and practicing manaakitanga on their mārae.
Inside the cover of the Australian version of the Whatu Aho Rua catalogue featuring an image of the blocked 13 metre high Sarjeant Gallery dome, Whanganui framed by a small 2.5 metre high Te Ātihaunui-a-Pāpārangi kūwaha meetinghouse 'doorway’ from Parikino, Whanganui River. The four centrally positioned poutokomanawa inside the dome are all ancestral ‘central ridgepole support posts’ from whare e tū ana ki ngā taha o tā rātou tupuna awa. At the opposite exit to the Dome is Archway for Henry Moore 1986 a sculptural work by Murupaenga. As with Matchitt’s Te Wepu it features demolition timber salvaged from Auckland building sites. Photo: Richard Wotton
Whatu Aho Rua, National Aboriginal Cultural Institute (Grenfell Street), Adelaide International Arts Festival, 1 March 1992. Inside the entrance can be seen a powerfully carved Whanganui River pou mua woodcarving from a Te Ātihaunui-a-Pāpārangi pātaka that once stood at Hiruharama ‘Jerusalem’ currently in the Whanganui Regional Museum. In relation to Newton's belief in the spiritual power of taonga the local nunga helping with the installation of W.AR in Adelaide were reluctant to handle this particular ancestral carving.
I was surprised a decade after Te Maori returned to hear Sir Sidney Mead give a keynote address to a theatre full of Māori educators and toi Māori at Toioho-a-Apiti with the following kind of statement,
‘…it is necessary to define Māori art so everybody knows what it is. Before this everyone seemed to know what it was. Also in preparations and negotiations for Te Maori, easily the biggest event in the history of Māori art, there were no big discussions about how to define our art.’
Sir Sidney Mead, keynote address, Toioho ki Apiti hui, 1996
Maaku e ki atu, kaore. I’m sure communities have entertained versions of these kinds of discussions about cultural orthodoxy and visual aesthetics for many centuries across Asia Pacific. Certainly, it features in New Zealand’s immediate colonial past. One observes the distinction in 1849 in the raruraru between Raharuhi Rukupō and other regional carvers and the Mihinare priest William Williams regarding the acceptance of Tūranga figurative carving within the Whare Mihinare at Manutuke. Around 1888 there was reputedly a negative response by elders to painting borrowed from Te Kooti Rikirangi’s whare Tokanganui-a-Noho Te Kūiti 1873 within the Rongopai meetinghouse at Waituhi outside Tūranga.3 Nor does this raruraru appear consigned to New Zealand’s colonial past. With post World War II urban drift rangatahi training as Māori art and crafts advisors in Primary Schools were having the same kinds of discussions (that characterise sites like Rongopai) with tohunga whakairo like Pineāmine Taiapa (from his first training course for Māori advisors held at Ruatoria in 1959-until his death in 1972) that the classicism of Te Maori seemed to encourage in its time.
I am confident that some of this attending courses and spending holidays learning from their mentor involved discussions and demonstrations regarding ‘appropriate’ Maori art. I heard this kōrero transmitted by Matchitt, Whiting, Hovell, Muru Walters and others. From this kōrero concerning Pineāmine Taiapa (1901-1972) it became clear that while he favoured orthodox practice he was more reserved about contemporary direction in the work of artists like Rau Hōtere (1931-2013) and even, at times, Matchitt.4 The differences between tohunga ‘expert’ and tauira ‘pupil’ were sometimes marked and I never sensed a compliance in the latter group returning to traditional models and simply repeating classical templates as had been the practice under Ngata with meetinghouses like Tūkākī (1943) a whare where, for example, John Taiapa and his team of Rotorua School carvers drew heavily on the Te Kaha pātaka.
Whatu Aho Rua catalogue featuring a double pair twining (i.e. whatu aho rua - a weaving term describing the structural basis of Māori cloak making) he poutokomanawa featuring Te Atihaunui-a-Pāpārangi rangatira Hori Kingi Te Anaua (Whanganui Regional Museum) and Selwyn Murupaenga's Te Maaoorii 1988 (created for an Auckland Art Gallery exhibition). W.A.R 1992 was published by Sarjeant Gallery in conjunction with Tandanya National Aboriginal Art Institute, Adelaide and travelled to Australia National University Gallery, Canberra and the Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, Sydney in 1992. See reading list below for an online version of the catalogue
The legacy of Te Maori also had a personal impact. I began addressing some of these issues raised by the show in my own curatorial work barely six months after Te Maori finished at the Auckland Art Gallery. The ambition Newton and others had for Māori taonga being seen as art, not simply as ethnological objects, can be observed the initial unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Chicago Art Institute to host the exhibition in 1986 and in the successful bid by the Auckland Art Gallery, as opposed to the Auckland Museum, to host the final te hokinga mai venue for the show. What may be difficult for younger readers to understand in 2024 is the way historical examples of Māori art were once viewed in Aotearoa often solely along ethnological lines. One visited museums to see taonga. What a contemporary Māori (once rangatahi) artist might be creating, from the 1960s onwards, was increasingly, though not exclusively, seen as the preserve of public or dealer galleries in Aotearoa.
In Whanganui in 1989 there was a literal demonstration of these two philosophies occupying two different kinds of institutional space. The Whanganui Regional Museum sat at the bottom of the Queens Park stairs. The Sarjeant Gallery sat prominently ki te tihi o Pukenamu. The exhibition Whatu Aho Rua which I curated for the Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui (for which research was begun in Auckland March-May 1988) drew heavily on both museum and gallery collections. I was just as comfortable visiting archaeologist Chris Jacolm (1955-2016) – the local museum curator – as I was turning up to kaumatua meetings to update elders on progress with the shows W.A.R and Te Ao Maori. I purposefully mixed Whanganui and Taranaki taonga with work by te hunga ora ‘living’ Māori artists. This kaupapa regarding continuum was not lost on museum and gallery professionals from around the country and from Australia when they visited the exhibition during and after the annual AGMANZ conference hosted by Whanganui in 1989.
The strong interest shown in W.A.R allowed it to travel locally to the Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt and to be redefined and re-designed, with significant Trans-Tasman interest, later in 1992 for the Adelaide International Arts Festival and its subsequent tour to other Australian venues (Canberra and Sydney). W.A.R came to be seen as a conciliatory opportunity for Whanganui iwi to celebrate their taonga in an international context missed out on earlier through inter-tribal alignment with their Taranaki relatives boycotting participation in Te Maori (see above reference to Mobil’s sponsorship of the show). Interestingly the W.A.R conceptually and physically returned full circle to Whanganui and another local showing but this time – it was the turn of the Whanganui Regional Museum to host the exhibition.
Other responses to Te Maori were more direct. The divisions seen in Whanganui seemed even more amplified in Wellington. Was it perhaps the historical role of the capital as a centre for cultural/political institutions that was influential on the gallery/museum division in Aotearoa? It seemed more noticeable in Pōneke because this differentiation was accentuated architecturally with both the National Museum and the National Art Gallery being housed in the same Buckle Street building but on different floors and with different staff and management. Add to these separations the presence of Te Maori downstairs in the museum and the role of the gallery upstairs was well poised in 1986 for the theatre and voicing that Newton predicted but slightly outside the confines of the travelling American show.
For me the real theatre at Buckle Street came from National Art Gallery’s visionary Director Luit Bieringa and his invitation to Paratene Matchitt to create a series of installations that were to occupy much of the government funded gallery space above at the same time Te Maori was on display downstairs. Huakina took the form of a visual haka – a direct challenge by Paratene Matchitt to Te Maori. Obviously the timing and the scale of the space was deliberate but perhaps as Chairman of Ngā Puna Waihanga ‘the Māori Artists and Writers Society’ the artist felt a responsibility and a right to address the singular focus on taonga downstairs. Whatever the complexities of motivation Matchitt’s language is one of battle lines being drawn, of militant flags and ramparts being raised and of clear historical references to a separatist leader, Te Kooti Rikirangi (c.1832-1893) who struggled with Crown authority in the late nineteenth century. The references throughout Huakina are to the militant and not so much to the more peaceful phase of Te Kooti’s life and the later extension of his hāhi.
The huge pine log constructions were a reference to the rammed earth and log palisades Te Kooti erected at Te Pōrere – a remote site in Ngāti Tūwharetoa’s gift to the nation -Tongariro National Park. Te Pōrere, 4 October 1869, was the last military engagement between Māori and the Crown and their kūpapa Māori allies. The largest wooden assemblage (more two dimensional and flat to its display surface is the one on which I focus here) was a reference to a huge battle pendant once flown by one of Te Kooti’s most trusted lieutenants Peka Makarini. Huakina, the name given to the entire exhibition, means ‘to raise up’. The topic Matchitt wished ‘to elevate’ before the New Zealand public was his personal feedback regarding Te Maori downstairs. His response is valuable because, with its central reference to the nineteenth century militant leader Te Kooti RIkirangi, it clarifies the longevity of discussion ‘contemporary’ Maori artists feel they have been having with the public and with their communities about the value of redefined tradition and the acknowledgement of change in their pioneering a new visual aesthetic.
Paratene Te Mokopuorongo Matchitt, Te Wepu 'the whip', this largescale work was a resurrection of the battle pendant flown by millitant prophet Te Kooti Rikirangi and his followers. Te Wepu was originally shown as part of the Huakina Series, 1986 National Art Gallery, Buckle Street premises, Wellington. Wood, lead, wire, welded steel and cut and angle ground. Caretakers of taonga: Te Papa Tongarewa. Photo: Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand Art at Te Papa, Te Papa Press, 2018
This image was taken late July 1986 after documenting Paratene Matchitt at Ōtatara Community Arts Centre, Hawkes Bay Polytechnic, Napier transforming a large pile of demolition timber procured from local building sites into what would become Te Wepu ‘the whip.’ I got into that orange van and travelled south with the artist and his work, documenting the installation of Te Wepu for the Huakina series, NAG, Wellington. Photo: Rangihīroa
Huakina was opened several nights later – 6 August 1986 by Ringatū leader Sir Monita Eru Delamere (1921-1993). Here is an extract of a text, I contributed to a Te Papa Tongarewa publication describing Te Wepu and four other constructions comprising Huakina, that helps explain the conversastion with Te Maori:
The deeper struggle that Matchitt highlights is contextual. This wall assemblage and the four other wooden constructions comprising ‘Huakina’ were installed upstairs at the National Art Gallery while just downstairs the blockbuster Te Maori exhibition was on display in the National Museum. In Matchitt’s view the museum exhibition’s aesthetic and selection of objects had a conservative ‘classicism’, a bias long promoted by museum ethnologists and central government. This required Matchitt’s wero, or challenge. In Te Wepu, he deliberately chose for inspiration an icon of Māori separatism which came from the National Museum’s own collection. Te Wepu draws on Western modernism’s contrapuntal tradition of critiquing legacy and attacking the orthodoxy that Te Maori promoted. In this way, Matchitt’s wooden assemblage reflects the ideological and aesthetic struggle that contemporary Māori artists can experience with institutions when the latter endorse only one particular type of Māori art.
Panoho in ‘New Zealand Art at Te Papa‘ (Te Papa Press, 2018: 222)
In the film Huakina where Eruera Te Whiti Nia (1949-2016) covers the exhibition Matchitt is interviewed regarding his views on Te Maori. His response is instructive, he reminds his viewer the show below involves, the art of its day not the art of today. The short response suggests a whole range of binaries and also critiques official histories that single out particular phases and types of Māori art while ignoring contemporaneity.
The Te Maori metanarrative downstairs is important but so also is the contrapuntal Māori response upstairs that epitomizes Te Wepu and the other Huakina installations. The work by male experts is vital but so also is the work by women experts. Today the work by those promoting classicism and mātauranga Māori may prove useful but not to the negligence of the living ‘reality’ experienced by most Māori in communities across Aotearoa and Australia.
While Paratene and many of the Gordon Tovey ( 1901-1974) and Pine Taiapa generation of artists have passed their message, particularly in relation to a show like Te Maori, continues to resonate. There is a growing need in Māoridom to remove the gatekeepers insisting on one position while excluding others, offering pronouncements and controlling channels by which funding is received and dispersed. A part of this gatekeeping behavior is unfortunately controlling the increasingly complex and variable artform we know today as ‘Māori.’ It is no longer important everyone simply knows what Māori art or Māori knowledge is – that is an ongoing debate in which all Māori stakeholders should be involved. Of far greater strategic significance is what this important indigenous and global artform could potentially become.
Māori art is the materialization of Māori thought.
Educator/artist John Bevan-Ford (1930-2005)
Ford’s conceptual quip, regarding what Māori art is, both highlights and addresses a key dilemma with shows like Te Maori that celebrate classical Māori taonga. Ford’s adage also suggests a possible solution. Once we decide on the high points of a culture and Māori art’s preferable appearance, we unavoidably stress its orthodoxy and the human compulsion to revere and endlessly repeat excellence. Once this focus is entrenched and rules for whakapapa ‘genealogies’ of art are established regarding who controls mātauranga Māori and its interpretation we open ourselves up to more ruthless restriction and direction. This is why I quoted Pineāmine Taiapa’s contention in Maori Art, ‘…there is room in the world of art for everyone.’ That inclusivity, Taiapa came to later on in his life – through his contact with tauira like Matchitt – offers a truer sense of belonging within a multitude of cultural possibilities. This is a belonging much more in keeping with kaupapa Māori and the promise of tātou tātou and yet Taiapa’s kupu also epitomizes everything gatekeepers are not about. Such restricted and controlled environments far from modelling the ideal of decolonizing, currently so popular across the indigenous world, potentially can simply create new managements of art and old hierarchies of knowledge presiding over and privileging their own and excluding those deemed outside their ‘community of taste’ (McEvilley, 1992).
It was Te Ātihaunui-a-Pāpārangi sculptor Matt Pine (1941-2021) who suggested, in his 1986 Highwater series of sculptures (produced around the same time as Matchitt’s Huakina installation) a more conciliatory way of working with force relations. Regarding the power of the Whanganui River, he suggested openness and receptivity to te au ‘the current’ and an honouring the mauri ‘lifeforce’ of the river so vital to both the design and function of hīnaki ‘the eel weir’. The tough construction of hīnaki’s open weave suggests a profound respect for accommodating the passage of water in any direction, both up the river and down the river, while assuring the trap’s primary objective – the capture of the tuna ‘eel’ itself.
The last thing Māori need on tā tatou awa ‘our cultural river’ is a structure like a dam that lowers water levels, impedes flow and potentially diminishes mauri. To some Te Maori may have appeared an impediment to such flow. To others it may have seemed the very personification of tuku iho flow itself. I say remove the dams and the gatekeepers allowing both flow and counterflow.
Ka rere atu te au, ka rere mai te tai ‘the river flows out, the tide surges in.’
REFERENCES and further reading:
Interested in further extended commentary on Mead’s chronology see my PhD thesis ‘Maori Art in Continuum’, UoA, 2001.
My essay ‘Paratene Matchitt: The Principle of Change in Maori Art’, ART NEW ZEALAND, Summer 1987/1988 Issue 45: 63-67 makes references to the legacy and impact of Te Maori on a major Māori artist
The Australian version of the Whatu Aho Rua catalogue available is available on the following University of New South Wales site:
For a piece of writing partly responding to issues raised by the keynote address of Sir Sidney Mead at Toioho ki Apiti, Massey University, Palmerston North see the following essay:
See the following film Huakina by Eruera Te Whiti Nia which generously offers a contemporary Māori examination of the legacy of Te Maori and the innovation introduced by the prophet Te Kooti Rikirangi:
‘His groundbreaking designs, with atmospheric lighting and striking installations, brought the museum both critical praise and public attention and had long-term influences on museum displays of so-called primitive art. ”He knows the fine line between showing sympathy for a tradition on its own terms and manipulating the tradition in terms of Western practices and expectations,” Art historian Robert Farris Thompson, Yale University 1978.’ Obituary, New York Times, 22 September 2001 ↩︎
In the late 1980s Sir Tamati Muturangi Reedy, secretary Maori Affairs, pointed out to me his sense that the central motif in Matchitt’s ‘Te Ātea series of drawings was directly related to his awareness of taowaru and the whakapapa line that flows centrally through the figurative language of the Te Kaha pataka ↩︎
In turn the Ringatū church decorated for Te Kooti Rikirangi had a major impact on rangatahi again in the 20th century and its inspiration can be seen in the paintings of Buck Nin, John Walsh and Shane Cotton and many others and in the writing of Witi Ihimaera. ↩︎
See Dame Kātarina Te Heikōkō Mataira’s wonderful anecdote regarding Pine being asked to open an exhibition involving the work of John Bevan-Ford and Paratene Matchitt and taonga in Kirikiriroa ‘Hamilton’ in the 1960s. Mataira Maori Artists of the South Pacific Ngapuna Waihanga, Raglan, 1984 ↩︎
‘Te Kōpua “the deep”, have you ever been at a point of crisis in your life where you have been brought to the edge…’
2021 for me has involved high highs and some lows lows. Life eh. The latter has involved enduring a 7 month long wait with a recruitment process for Curator Māori involving the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. I was shortlisted for the position back in March 22, went through their interview process ‘in good faith’ as the person in charge described it. Three referees were requested, 5 of my listed referees were actually approached with long detailed conversations reported back to me.
There was a person chosen unanimously by the panel and then…nothing for 3 weeks. Then on April 15, after requests for information I was told the gallery was taking ‘a pause’ in the recruitment process. On May 3 I sent a link to the chair of the search panel about keeping candidates engaged during recruitment processes. Obviously I was referring to myself. I was given the impression I should hang in there, ‘in good faith’. Those were the words I remember being used several times along with comments about what benefits there would be waiting for the gallery to go through whatever it was doing. This was all in a telephone conversation – nothing written down or official. The next time I heard from the Panel was 12 October, ‘As promised some months ago, I’m getting in touch…’ In the intervening five months of silence a whole lot of spin came out from the AAG in the Media that the Gallery needed to make other appointments first one of which, ‘Kaupapa Māori’, would directly be involved in the Curator Maori appointment process. The person appointed to such a position would bring a particular expertise, in the area of the Treaty of Waitangi and its relevance in the workplace, to the Gallery. Apparently this was a priority that explained the ‘pause’.
More Māori representation sounded strange to me because two of the three panel members in the March interview were Māori. One was a representative of Haerewa (the Māori advisory panel supporting Māori within the gallery) and the other had broader Auckland Council experience in ToW workplace related issues. More importantly when the appointed ‘Kaupapa Māori’ member sat on the 12 November panel he only had a small area in the interview questionnaire because he (as with the Deputy Director – also Maori and appointed several weeks earlier) had corporate but no background experience working in galleries, or in the arts industry or with curating Māori art specifically. Another wait followed and after a couple of weeks of no response to the interview and no request for referees I was inevitably informed another candidate had been appointed to the position.
What followed were a series of exchanges with an HR Manager who mentioned no commitment to the preferred candidate in the March interview had been made. After a number of letters and pressing her with a timeline, and arguing about the need to dialogue since the gallery apparently placed emphasis on partnership/conversational values and principles identified in the Treaty, some real information was squeezed out. I recall right at the end of my November 12 interview (the only chance one gets to actively dialogue) I asked the Director, why the protracted recruitment process and the long delays? No real or genuinely felt apology was offered, just a comment others higher up the chain, felt she (the Director) ‘apparently’ needed to be involved in the interview process. The HR Manager in a final proper response clarified the first process (where a unanimous decision had been made and references had been sought) had not been signed off by the Director. Bingo. Here was the issue that would have been useful back in April/May. Yes a clear rejection (i.e. we no longer want to proceed with your application) but something I could have coped with better than being kept hanging for much of the working year waiting for an interview that in the end most definitely was a formality, where something had already been decided and we were just going through the motions.
The wait and being left hanging was the issue, not the minor involvement that ToW kaupapa had in the final appointment. In the end only two of three original March panel members sat on the Committee and there was a strange addition to the Panel of the newly appointed Deputy Director also turning up (he asked one confusing question) to bolster, one presumes, the interview score so the numbers weighed in favour of the directorial position privately indicated in March. All in all there was no way anyone, even someone unanimously selected in the March interview and a previously preferred candidate, was going to successfully take on those odds in that November interview if the Director did not want them appointed. In my spirit I felt throughout that interview the outcome was already fait accompli.
Of course it was devastating to have the phone call from the person that had told me in March I should hang in there ‘in good faith’. However, the point of my kōrero here is not to dwell on my unhappiness with the rude and arrogant way AAGToT made me wait 7 months while they got their processes, response and alternative candidate worked out. I want to say that my referees for this position were amazing, incredibly supportive and that they always believed in me. Their response was they felt the long wait was unnecessary, the process dodgy, and it was the gallery’s loss not appointing me.
I am frustrated by the small number of industry people that keep cutting across and undermining me in the arts and in education. And that will be my ongoing process to find who slithers in the shadows. It still hurts and I am working through it but what I wanted to share here was a far more special moment that dramatically changed my thinking about this whole concern. My wife insisted on sharing a video she had taken of me talking about a month earlier about a painting that came out of a studio experience producing work for ĀTĀROA and the Mahara Gallery in Waikanae from May through to August. I was really reluctant to look at it. Although I am an educator and a presenter, lately I haven’t spoken much in posts. It was about 5/6 years ago I did some radio, television interviews and a short marketing film on my book MAORI ART, History, Architecture, Landscape and Theory (Batemans, 2015/2018).
Anyway, there I was the other day being forced to look at myself talking about Te Ruki Kawiti and the fight atop Ruapekapeka in 1845 and his kōrero with Hōne Wiremu Heke Pōkai … and I was deeply moved! It was like a version of myself and the ancestors had spoken truth into my spirit and into my future and I was listening to it.
So friends have you ever been at a point in your life where you have been brought to the edge? Have you ever taken on the parāoa in the ‘deep’? How did you cope? I want to make the point that neither the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, nor of the earlier more important 1835 He Whakaputanga (the Declaration of Independence) nor of current institutional visions and slogans offered much hope for me in this particular situation. What moved me were the events that followed the signing of the 1840 document just as it moved Hōne Heke to test the Union Jack and British sovereignty. What moved me was the unhappiness of Te Ruki Kawiti to put up with the constant reneging of the Crown and its unwillingness to truly share power and honour the rangatiratanga and mana of indigenous leaders. Te Kawiti’s actions at Ōhaeawai and Ruapekapeka show a willingness to go out into te kōpua ‘the deep’ and take on the resistance.
written for the opening of Bruce Connew, ‘A Vocabulary’, Te Uru, Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Titirangi 12 December 2020
E ngā mate. Ka mahara tātou ki ngā mumu Māori e takoto ana kei raro i ngā parekura o ngā pakanga whenua o mua. Haere, haere, haere. Haere ki te poho o te Atua, haere ki Hawaikinui, Hawaiki roa, Hawaiki pāmamao.
rangihīroa, Hato Mikaere, Ōhaeawai
The parekura sits silent no noise at all just the chatter of a tui wrecking putiputi down by the hall just the wind murmuring across the fertile plains he swore he heard their voices around Ngāi Kuku’s last remains
down by the river where the fighting pā once stood or was it just the twittering of pīwakawaka in the woods
the scale of the loss disgusted him it explained why he refused the spirit path to Rēinga instead he would choose to guard over bones and taonga and mourn unmentioned loss hidden from a nearby cenotaph that counted not the cost
raised to his last battle near fields where he had toiled he read the text again and again as if it would reveal some other truth or meaning that might possibly transcend a vocabulary of forgetting bronze letters that won’t bend colourful adjectives murdering rebels, barbarous savages
he struggled with the message they were a people worth forgetting
Indeed not a word of his hapū’s bravery not a mention of their name or that settler greed for land was largely to blame for a war no native asked for how else could one explain an eternity of loss within and this deep gnawing pain
and when archaeologists visit he wishes they’d hear him yell Haere mai E hoa, haul your trig over here, man Yeah map us brother, draft us on that plan
but the grid only measures trenches so we’ll always be missed except by manuhiri that want to take a piss
and summer comes and summer goes and the pōhutukawa bleeds scarlet in the morning 10 shades of crimson when the sun retreats
He pōhutukawa ko tahiHe pōhutukawa, e ruaHe pōhutukawa, e toru..
Some notes regarding ’10 Shades…‘
My wife’s people, Te Aupōuri, live near Cape Rēinga in the ‘far North’ of Aotearoa. They along with other Muri Whenua iwi, like Ngāti Kuri, consider themselves gatekeepers to Te Rerenga o Wairua ‘the leaping off point of the Spirits’ at the northern extremity of Aotearoa. Many Polynesian Islands in the South Pacific have these points of departure. This role of kaitiakitanga ‘guardianship’ at the exit of ēnei wairua ‘these spirits’ journeying to Hawaiki has created family histories where ghost stories are common. At times the Spirits stop along the way and there are visitations. The narratives told at night of encounters with the spirits are the most frightening. These wānanga ‘narratives’ are cherished and remembered and passed on with great relish and drama by the skilled storytellers of Muri Whenua.
10 Shades…then , in essence, is a ghost story taken from the point of view of a toa ‘Māori warrior’, he mumu Māori, who decides not to take the well worn path to Rēinga and determines to remain instead with his whānau and the warriors he fought with on a Ngā Pakanga Whenua o Mua battefield. In the poem one of the greatest struggles the central character has is accepting a memorial inscription raised near the battlefield. History, so the saying goes, is written by the victors. While this may be partly true these are also the days where indigenous voices outside the majority culture may also contest such histories.
Photograph featured: Mark Adams, Ko Kawanui te puna, Whatitiri Springs, 26 October 1998, illustrated in MAORI ART, chapter 6 ‘Raruraru ki te Puna’, Batemans, 2015/2018: 139
I DRANK THE WATER
10 pm, Sunday 6 January 2018
Do you remember?
the stream we camped beside
when our families were huddled together
around the patriarch
and the dirty white canvas tent
that spouted waterfalls when it rained too hard
when your proudest boast was
how you hung off the Duke’s nose
we would put our heads under
and watch:
koeke ‘fresh water shrimps’ scuttle and dart
around smooth orange pebbles and
kōkopu flit to soft overhangs
nervous
as wind
ruffled the bracken dusted surface
even down under
we could still hear muffled
the branches of the mānuka
creak and laugh at our headless bodies
clattering they were
fondly against one another
as the clouds covered the holes in their canopy
rangihīroa, he uru manuka, Lake Rototoa, Kaipara ki Tonga, 2008
and like Narcissus
touching the mirror
we drank from that wellspring
and drew in its purity
as if it had been struck from a rock
as if it was the air
that caressed the sheer rock cliffs
where the gannets dive
as if it was the birthright of
every New Zealander
And in case
you scoff as you wade our rivers
and dare not
practice baptism
or bring to your lips what you cannot boil
and in case you don’t recall
I drank that water
rangihīroa, Threatened Waikoropupū Springs, Golden Bay, Te Wai Pounamu, 2018
rangihīroa, he āmionga kikorangi, ‘the blue orbit’, 2018
E ngā kaipānui tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā ra koutou katoa. Ngā whakawhetai ki a koutou mo te awhi me te tautoko hoki. Hari te ngakau nei e hoko ana koutou ki tā tātou pukapuka. Naaku te rourou, nau te rourou, ka kī te kete.
The following text comprises notes used to prepare for a presentation of ‘Writing Māori Art’ at the City Gallery, Wellington, 25 August 2016. They explore the background to the creation of MAORI ART: History, Architecture, Landscape and Theory, Batemans, 2015/2018. Some key themes and motivations for the work are discussed. ‘Writing Maori Art’ has been edited for this particular platform however, it largely follows the question/response format used in the original kōrero. I am offering this as a kōha to recognise the many hundreds on the publisher’s facebook site that have supported this project and the many who have been visiting this companion site to peruse the MaC I-X blogs. I hope the kaupapa is useful to those searching for authorial intent.
Panoho, Leonard, Caldwell, Brunt and Tamati-Quennell
It was difficult to know what to prepare here. I wondered who might be attending so I found myself asking questions throughout this kōrero. I have largely kept that initial structure involving enquiry and response. This imagining ones audience and then writing to / for that readership or group is what I think writing a book is about. There were other influences as well. The panel members (Megan Tamati-Quennell, MONZ and Peter Brunt, VUW), that follow this talk, were also interested in hearing about the book’s central river metaphor so I have included some discussion on awa. If you are looking for a brief explanation of the river try this video link.
Lorraine Steele, (Lighthouse NZ PR Book Publicity) assigned by my publisher Batemans to help market ‘Maori Art’, told me prior to its initial launch in June 2015 at Te Uru that books, particularly art books in New Zealand, don’t sell themselves. No great revelation for those involved in publishing here tonight. You would immediately understand the role authorial self-promotion plays in marketing New Zealand books, films indeed all manner of creative activity in Aotearoa. In Auckland, the situation seems grim. With a city of nearly 1.5 million people there is no major window for New Zealand books on Queen Street, or apart from Unity Books further back, in the central city. Our publicist suggested I take a few months out to travel meet, greet, sign and sell. She was particularly keen on areas of the country with community ties to the book. What sounded like grim advice then makes good business sense now.
So here is my delayed response, eventually following marketing advice. In returning here to Wellington I am re-visiting a site important early on in the creation, the conceptualising, the illustration and in the production of ‘Maori Art’. I lived locally. I taught up the road on Tasman Street at the local Design School. My original publishing contracts were sent here. My first manuscript was created in this town. It was here I began describing to alarmed, possibly bemused readers, I was writing a book on Māori Art that would be centered around the metaphor of a river. My first readers Mary Barr, Jayne Sayle, Garry Nicholas and Luit Bieringa were and still all are locals. I curated a major Māori and a Pacific show, for the Dowse Art Museum and for the City Gallery respectively, prior to living here and I am grateful to Robert Leonard and the City Gallery for letting me continue this legacy in not simply celebrating curating but also writing ‘Maori Art’ with you.
WHY WRITE MAORI ART?
So why write a book on Māori Art? Indeed, why write any book? At risk of personal scrutiny I quote British novelist George Orwell’s essay ‘Why I Write‘ because his account of authorship and motivation provides a useful structure here to work with and against. Writing post world war II (summer 1946) Orwell lays down 4 drives: sheer egotism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. Some areas resonate more than others. I test a couple of these ideas.
‘First published by the Museum of Contemporary Art Ltd, Sydney, Australia in 1992 in Headlands: Thinking though New Zealand Art, exhibition publication page 122’ MCA
Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.
Voltaire, letter to M. le Riche, 6 February 1770
Headlands is such an exquisitely uncomfortable exhibition that it may not prove popular. But it should be seen, both for the quality of the works and for the way it reveals a darker but more interesting side to our nearest neighbours.
Joanna Mendelssohn, New Views of NZ, The Bulletin, 21 April 1992: 104
Black music has very often been stolen and co-opted by white people. But there is a complexity to the story of the blues. Early blues records had vanished by the 1950s. They were disposable things on their way to being forgotten completely. And it was a coterie of white collectors who rescued them from oblivion. Now there are problems with the white taste for the authentic, and the patronizing way that some of the old bluesmen were dug up and exhibited as authentic primitives.
Hari Kunzru interview with Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson ‘Sjón’, BOMB, 15 May 2017
White man, hear me! History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations. And it is with great pain and terror one begins to realize this. In great pain and terror one begins to assess the history which has placed one where one is and formed one’s point of view. In great pain and terror because, therefore, one enters into battle with that historical creation, Oneself, and attempts to recreate oneself according to a principle more humane and more liberating; one begins the attempt to achieve a level of personal maturity and freedom which robs history of its tyrannical power, and also changes history. But, obviously, I am speaking as an historical creation which has had bitterly to contest its history, to wrestle with it, and finally accept it in order to bring myself out of it.’
James Baldwin, ‘White Man’s Guilt’, Ebony, August 1965
Headlands aimed to present an overview of New Zealand art which opened up ways of thinking, extended knowledge, and shifted this knowledge into new possibilities of awareness. By building on pre-existing notions of the culture and art of New Zealand, this exhibition reflected and reconsidered those judgements, presenting new ideas, and re-presenting the familiar in a new context.
Museum of Contemporary Art statement, MCA, Sydney web site, accessed 20 December 2017
I have been thinking through Baldwin’s comments. With the past everpresent, musing over HEADLANDS, its many responses, over the decades, means contesting less helpful frames of history many critics have sought to impose and reiterate but seldom to revise. American writer Susan Sontag once confided, ‘Reading criticism clogs conduits through which one gets new ideas: cultural cholesterol.’For me various reactions to, not so much my 1992 essay (‘Maori at the Centre, On the Margins…’ for HEADLANDS, MCA, Sydney) but rather to, its authorship, constitute ongoing cultural constriction. Too much has been written, is still being written about me rather than the eleven paragraphs (of a more broadly positioned essay) I penned.
‘Reading criticism clogs conduits through which one gets new ideas: cultural cholesterol.’Susan Sontag diary 1964
It would be difficult, unnecessary even, to fractionally respond to these critiques when references to arguments in my HEADLANDS essay have become something of a diversion. Like ‘true north’ its’ position exists in that direction over there: like the angle that one might point one’s house to capture the sun. Immediately after my PhD examination, 2003 novelist Witi Ihimaera (part of the examination panel) breezily described this compass point as a pragmatic reference. The essay he said was one of his points of bearing, out there, on the periphery. For me the edginess of Ihimaera’s remark has deeper resonance. ‘Maori at the Centre…’ has been impaled, muted and neutered. It doesn’t argue back. It mostly offers up a couple of oft-quoted phrases obediently receiving endless re-inscription. If anyone has difficulty understanding this controversial treatment ask the text – it saw it all: monologues not discussions, soliloquy not dialogue and silence from, not debate with, the protagonists.
DEBATE: ‘A formal discussion on a particular matter in a public meeting...in which opposing arguments are put forward...’ Oxford Dictionary
Rangihīroa Panoho, Āku Maunga Hāere (My Travelling Mountains), 2015, acrylic inks and paint on paper, 3901 x 1267mm revisits an earlier work. This series tells the story of the travelling of New Zealand’s resources overseas whether as a tangible or as a financial product. This series was first displayed at the launch for the book MĀORI ART on display at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, Titirangi, AUCKLAND in June 2015 (catalogue here). It was shown with some of the other framed works on display on this site (see below photographs by Sameshima and Adams). Āku Maunga Hāere is also the name of one of the chapters in the book MĀORI ART and relates to some of the key issues discussed in that section of the publication.
Rangihīroa Panoho, Te Wairere a Miru (Wairua Falls), 2013, acrylic inks and watercolour on board (IOU exhibition, TIVOLI, Waiheke April 2016)
Rangihīroa Panoho, Pao pao te wai, Waipao te awa, acrylic on canvas, 2016 (IOU exhibition, TIVOLI, Waiheke April 2016)
The river with which Te Uriroroi identify is named after the flush of water in summer from the Whatitiri puna that was so powerful the motion caused boulders and rocks to clash and clatter into one another. Pao refers to the striking smashing motion of the water.
Rangihīroa Panoho, Kōkohuia, 2015, acrylic on board (IOU exhibition, TIVOLI, Waiheke April 2016)
Whiti/Fiji, the cross over, Navigator Series, 2013, acrylic inks and gold on board, photo: Haruhiko Sameshima (IOU exhibition, TIVOLI, Waiheke April 2016)
Hoturoa holds out the Korotangi, photo: Haruhiko Sameshima (IOU exhibition, TIVOLI, Waiheke April 2016)
WORK IN PROGRESS
Bi-disk/kaka pooria, drawing, acrylic inks on paper. Jose and Catherine Conland, Wellington. [Comparative material]
ALOHA, 2014-2021
ALOHA under construction
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Rangihīroa, Northern Wars (1845/1846) preparatory sketches, 2020 preparatory drawings, Rāhiri at Whiria, Pākanae, Hokianga te whanga, wānanga, 2020rangihīroa Northern Wars, 2020, coloured acrylic inks, matai and Japanese cherry on paper
For the convenience of those visiting the site this post contains 5 samples of video, Television and Radio material in chronological sequence 2015-2016 covering the publication ‘MAORI ART: History, Architecture, Landscape and Theory‘, Batemans, Auckland, launched Te Uru, Waitakere Contemporary Art Gallery, Titirangi, Auckland, 10 June 2015.
The publishers facebook site (link above) has all the background to the making of the Film Construction book launch video with Director Perry Bradley and his team: Kia rere tonu ngā wai o te awa. ‘The River Must Flow’. Producer -Felicia Brunsting, DOP – James Rua, Production Assistant – Ferris Bradley, Stills Photographer – Belinda Bradley. Locations, Kingsland\Central Kaipara, 16 May 2015
Māori art book illustrates ‘visual whakapapa’‘Expert art historian, and our first ever Māori PhD recipient in Art History, Rangihiroa Panoho has just released a new book with a unique focus on Māori art and how it conveys whakapapa through visual mediums.’ Reporter: Manawa Wright, Te Kārere, TVNZ, location: Pukekawa, Auckland Domain, 10 June 2015
‘Maori Art’ book, Interview Matai Smith and author, Good Morning, TVNZ, 28 July 2015
MAORI ART wins AAANZ Prize for best writing by Māori\Pacific author, Australia National University, Canberra. Video : PIHIRAU PRODUCTIONS Ltd, 3 December, 2016
CHAPEL memorial service poroporoaki for Dr Ray Thorburn (1937-2023) Kārori 6 May 2023
Dr Ray Thorburn (far right) and te roopu whānau (L-R – Rosemary and Mapuna Pocklington, Rev. Rikki Witana Snr, ko au, Shona Pink-Martin raua ko Adam Pink-Martin) PhD celebration for Māori graduates, Tānenui-a-Rangi whare, Waipapa Mārae, University of Auckland, May 2003
Ka tangi te kūkū, ka tangi te kākā,
ka tangi hoki ahau.
Ka hinga te rākau rangatira,
he rata whakamarumaru.
Ngāueue te ngahere.
Ka rere, kei runga ake, te kāhui manu,
e ngaoki mōwaho mai ana
ngā pepeke kei raro.
Kei hea e okioki ana rātou?
Ka titiro ake au ki te poupou o te rā.
Kaore te marumaru o tou mangu
e toro mai ana.
Nā reira, e te marumaru takoto mai,
okioki koe, moe mai rā. Ka mahara au
ki tou awhi me te tautoko tonu hoki.
Haere, haere, haere, haere ki te poho
o te Atua.
Tēnā koe te whare tapū e tū nei
ko Futuna te mahi toi o te kaihanga
rongonui ko John Scott. Ka titiro au ki
te whare nei ka mōhio ki Te Atua
ae, heoi anō te āhuatanga o Tāne
whakapiripiri hoki (taku kōrero whakarite – te poutokomanawa ne!).
E te whānau pani.
Taku aroha ki a Sally rāua ko Mark
me te whānau whanui me te wāhi ngaro,
he wāhi tahanga nei i mahue iho
he mamae hōhonu.
Ka tangi te kūkū, ka tangi te kākā,
ka tangi hoki ahau.
Ka hinga te rākau rangatira,
he rata whakamarumaru.
Ngāueue te ngahere.
Ka rere, kei runga ake, te kāhui manu,
e ngaoki mōwaho mai ana
ngā pepeke kei raro.
Kei hea e okioki ana rātou?
Ka titiro ake au ki te poupou o te rā.
Kaore te marumaru o tou mangu
e toro mai ana.
Nā reira, e te marumaru takoto mai,
okioki koe, moe mai rā. Ka mahara au
ki tou awhi me te tautoko tonu hoki.
Haere, haere, haere, haere ki te poho
o te Atua.
Tēnā koe te whare tapū e tū nei
ko Futuna te mahi toi o te kaihanga
rongonui ko John Scott. Ka titiro au ki
te whare nei ka mōhio ki Te Atua
ae, heoi anō te āhuatanga o Tāne
whakapiripiri hoki (taku kōrero whakarite – te poutokomanawa ne!).
John Scott, Futuna Chapel, 1958-1961, Interior looking back to entrance, 6 May 2023
E te whānau pani.
Taku aroha ki a Sally rāua ko Mark
me te whānau whanui me te wāhi ngaro,
he wāhi tahanga nei i mahue iho
he mamae hōhonu.
E ngā whāea e ngā mātua tēnā koutou,
tēnā koutou, tēnā rā koutou katoa.
I couldn’t think of any other way to offer
a tribute in the 3 minutes left here other
than a poetic sketch to hint at the loss
and legacy left by Dr Ray Thorburn:
Ray wore shiny leather shoes
The kind that clacked on the lino and
made one stand to attention
no pretension
just passing through
seeking signatures
down rabbit hole corridors
a man on a mission
with papers and meetings and mates
and pressing dates round
plates of calendars and curricula
red face, white walrus moustache
confident gestures on the white board
charting a layline in March
ending the old and setting sail for Whetumārama
and the trajectory you plotted was a path
true to the cultures you loved
true to a uniqueness you cherished.
your words
‘…the quest in your painting to make the image take on the personality of its surroundings’
Dr Ray Thorburn, Modular3, Series 2, 1970, Christchurch Art Gallery
and that was the new conjoint design degree programme
a balance of horizontals and verticals
producing a third plane:
optical, bedazzling
where you sought
‘…[a] total environment where the audience is completely
encompassed by the work.’
And out of this fertile soil
your manager wanted to grow
a Bauhaus of the South Pacific
but I think a gathering place of
like-minded colleagues
was more in your mind
a mārae ātea
where you assembled
and employed us
and sold us
a dream in the early 1990s
me a burnt out foundational Māori curator
and others more senior
from around the world
signed up with the stroke of a pen
in airport lounges entered and exited
between flights
I once asked you how you knew I was looking for work?
a little bird tapped on my shoulder, you said
and over the years we kept connections
LinkedIn, my PhD celebration, job references
where we supported one another
or perhaps, where you were simply trying to encourage
I found you a man of vision and ideas
who believed in me more than I believed in myself
I now stand on your shoulders
Not because the vision has been executed
But because your legacy is in
others bringing it to life.
I think you were right when you wrote
but never sent me these words:
‘…you and your colleagues did outstanding work transforming the school and creating NZ’s first conjoint degree programme between a university and polytechnic. It was a culturally inclusive curriculum which Massey University took over and adapted…To not stand up for those who made it possible is to dishonour their remarkable achievements.’
Dr Ray Thorburn, portrait in situ, memorial service, Futuna Chapel, 6 May 2023
Your life Dr Ray Thorburn was full of such
remarkable achievements and it was an
honour walking with you a while
and here
recounting one of the milestones
along the way.
Nā reira, kanui te koa
kua huihui mai tātou i tēnei ahiahi pō,
kia ora mai anō tātou katoa.
_________________________________________________
https://vimeo.com/817089068/6cb172de62
Press the above vimeo link for the whole the Futuna Chapel memorial service (the 5 minutes referenced above is 1:02:10 onwards).
…K.H Let’s just talk about one of the pictures we have up on our web page. It is part of a gravestone to Marmaduke George Nixon who commanded colonial defence force cavalry. Interesting reference to Nixon in an essay within your book by the historian/curator Dr Rangihīroa Panoho, who says that New Zealand should not try to sanitize this unflattering history. Don’t remove that Ōtāhuhu memorial to Colonel Nixon, for example, how else will we learn? Do you share that view, presumably?
B.C Yes, I do share that view but it was interesting when I came up with the idea for this project I wanted someone to write an essay. The very first person I thought about was Rangihīroa and contacted him and he agreed. But what I wanted to do, maybe this is the Pākehā boy from Panmure, I wanted to photograph separately [my emphasis]. I didn’t want him to see what I was photographing. I didn’t want him to discuss what I was photographing…
K.H So his essay is not a commentary on your photos
B.C Absolutely. So [that was] what I wanted, although at times he has found it a little bit awkward. He has written beautifully. It will make you cry. But…I didn’t want to see it until it was bound in the book. Two things there. One, I didn’t want it to influence me in the way I responded to what I found because I was on a mission to find what was out there and what it might mean. I wanted him to write without me trying to influence him. It had to be completely his. I was determined and I didn’t read it until the book was bound and I was completely blown away. [I] could see that we crossed over in places – Māori/Pākehā – quite different cultures but we brought similar ideas together.
K.H And it’s a really timely book because we seem to have reached some peak colonisation talk in this last year. People, and this is around the world not only in New Zealand, have this prescient view. To you it feels like this was the continuation of your career.
B.C It’s the way it worked out. It was the next thing. There was discussion as the [Civil War] monuments started to come down in the US…whether the monuments here should be pulled down or turned away and that is what Rangi is referring to in his text. There are two things out at Ōtāhuhu. There is the 8 metre tall monument. He was a very popular army man at the time. New Zealand loved him. But he was also part of the militia which went out and killed people. There is also a gravestone in front of that monument and that is where that photograph is from – Grafton Gully. He is one of the few who was disinterred and the remains put out at Ōtāhuhu. He was involved in a pretty bad moment in the war.
This small blog is a belated response to a portion of the above RNZ interview which I just played back. The reference point to the conversation is the section of my essay below and of course to the contentious and ongoing debate as to whether George Marmaduke Nixon’s Monument should be removed from its current Ōtāhuhu location (despite the Auckland Council’s response in 2017). I refer to Nixon directly in my essay and this is picked up on in Kim Hill’s commentary. However, my reasons for wanting these kinds of monuments to stay in position isn’t just the point I make about reminding future New Zealanders about our dodgy colonial past. In the very first paragraph of the 2nd section of the essay I lay out my understanding of whakapapa and the way that history is layered. Yes, I am quoting Orwell but it is really just because he describes it so well. History is a palimpsest. I believe, and I tested this theory to a large degree in my book MAORI ART, that the best kind of palimpsest is the one that shows all its layers – the accretion of the good, the bad and the ugly. That is our mixed up past and to try and hide it away in a museum or a library or in our pronouncements about people’s behaviour is a very poor legacy we leave unresolved for future generations. Kim Hill noted that an Ōtāhuhu resident, who saw herself as educated, felt the monument should be removed. Her reasoning was that we wouldn’t want a statue of Hitler in our midst. Everyone should be allowed to express their opinion but I do wonder whether the Auckland resident considered Germany’s Erinnerungskultur and the Nazi predicament that continues to haunt leaders and common people alike even to this day. See, for example, one commentator’s view of Chancellor Angela Merkles legacy as a leader.
Grappling with such a serious legacy is still there. Burying a monument, judged by a particular generation to be politically incorrect, in museum storage or perhaps on display or, worse, erasing the public memory of the momument (or possibly destroying it) does not help the public view, interpret or understand why it was once valorised by earlier generations of the same public. Seeing and engaging, rather than imagining, the physical remains of our ‘colonial’ legacy may very well help us better understand it.
Panoho, part of essay for Connew’s ‘A Vocabulary’
E KŌRERO ANA KEI ROTO I TE KORE ‘SPEAKING INTO THE VOID’, the 2nd section of an essay written for Bruce Connew’s ‘A Vocabulary’, Vapour Momenta Press, 2021
There must be a way then to speak into the complex layers of this past where family and tribal members are both loyalist and ‘rebels’ and where leaders serve very different tribal and Crown agendas at the same time. Perhaps an adaption of the British novelist George Orwell’s palimpsest might be useful here. In his historical allegory Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell said, 'All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary' Rather than the authoritarian erasure Orwell describes the printer’s palimpsest might prove more utilitarian. Here the past might be thought of as not so much erased but as rendered translucent. Each layer of time builds on the previous and collectively it allows a peering-through process to take place.
Panoho in Connew 2021: 31
‘…his passing [i.e. that of Hekenukumai Busby] is a big loss to everyone in the waka community, not just us, but to all those in the Pacific. And it’s a huge challenge for us. It’s not as if the waka has landed and it’s all over now. We’ve got to keep trying to move along and face all the challenges like he did over the last 40 years. We’d be irresponsible not to try to carry on with his mahi and kaupapa. Otherwise, our time with him would’ve been all for nothing…A large burden has been lifted from him, and our job now is to ensure that we are true to the things he taught us.’
Hoturoa Barlow-Kerr, ‘Hoturoa and the waka legacy, E -Tangata 9 June 2019
I started out writing this blog to help explain the context for an exhibition of Māori art (ĀTĀROA ‘long shadow’) I contributed within Whētu Mārama ‘bright star’ a Māori community building, part of the Kupe Waka Centre which opened 10 December 2022 and which continues until 10 February 2023. If you are interested in that part of the kōrero then you will find detail at the end of this account and in the latter selection of images enclosed.
Reflective entry regarding the enforced Covid 19 bubble, memory and gathering
Featured image: Rangihīroa, ‘Tōtara North, Ditch‘ 10.51 am, 1 September 2019, captures a stretch of road that once was the life blood of the little kauri timber milling community on the Northwestern side of the Whangaroa Harbour. To the left at the entrance of the road is the hall where pictures used to be projected and cricket was played on grounds that today are being reclaimed by the arterial fingers of the harbour. The road leads up towards an historic graveyard where many of the colonial families are buried (including my mother, my grandparents, my aunties, uncles and Pākehā ancestors) assembled together as they once were in life. Further on is the nineteenth century school which many of these loved ones attended. For 6 months in 1970 I would walk with cousins from the corner where the bus would drop us off. I sometimes had bare feet and I remember the soft soles of my town feet didn’t much like the loose metal road. That was 1970.
