The following is a record of a kōrero given at Story Lab last night at Crave the current location for ‘Te RONGO’ until 1 September 2026.
This is my pitopito kōrero for Story Lab last night at CRAVE for those interested. My show ‘Te Rongo’ hangs behind me measuring my words:
Story Lab Kōrero 12 July 2026
rangihīroa, Waitītiko, 2025, acrylic inks on prepared board, 300 x 943. #7 in ‘Te RONGO’ catalogue
Whakataka te hau ki te uru, whakataka te hau te tonga, Kia makinakina ki uta, kia mataratara ki tai. E hiaki ana te atakura. He tio he huka he hau hū. Tīhei mauri ora
Ko Rangi ko tama o te Korekore, atua o te waitapū e. Ka whakawehia a Rangi rāua ko Papatūanuku, ka whakapukea te tangi – aue. Kei a Rangi he ua pūnehunehu he hoa riporipo te moana roimata a Papatūanuku e. Wairere ngā puna o Maungawhau, Te Tātua o Riukiuta, Maunga Ōwairaka. Wairere ngā puna o te whenua, he wai mata, he wai aroha. Ka moe ngā puna o te kahui maunga ki Waitītiko, ka moe ngā puna o Waiōrea, ka puta ki waho ki te huanui o Tokaroa te ara o rangitoto e pana ana ki te Waitematā. E ngā whaea, e ngā mātua e ngā kaitiaki o ngā taonga, he wānanga, e hoatu mai nei. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā rā koutou katoa
I brought the local landscape into this space because I wanted to talk about belonging to place as a new beginning for some. Ngā tāngata whenua stress belonging and personalising the landscape not only because of tā mātou honohono ‘our connections’ through whakapapa but also because it allows us to sense and to feel our surrounds. Te Rongo.
Just the other day I dropped off the van delivering the show of paintings behind me up on Dominion Road. My family were doing different things so I decided to walk home. It was cold but it seemed to focus my senses more on the experience. Much to my surprise a show opened up on the hīkoi down King Edward. Quite a fashionable name I would imagine prior to the abdication in ‘36. With each step it felt like each villa was one upping the next. More refined finial posts. More tasteful fretwork. Larger more impressive gates, fences and carefully designed entrances. Grander renovations. More beautiful specimen trees: all the way down, down down down to Morningside here.
When one follows this descent to Cabbage Tree Swamp [Sandringham] Road and feels the lava flow drop directly one imagines what that descent might mean. Watershed. Collecting pond. Swamp. Pūkekos. Ko ngā ōrea ‘long fin eels’, ngā rakiraki ‘ducks’. But the space I’m referring to in my show behind me is one not less valued but one I think our tūpuna jealously celebrated. It was not only Auckland’s watershed but it was a mahinga kai, a place where hapū gathered food and resources. All of the flora, fauna, birdlife, ika and molluscs relied on the nutrients that passed down from the kāhui maunga.
Ōwairaka then is a living landscape. Here the kahui maunga gather together like feasting rangatira, rivers sleep with other waterways and beget new flows that pass not through sewers, safety valves, culverts and drains. Rather they freely meander and find their way casually out through the rocky huanui ‘causeway’ of Tokaroa that thrusts itself out: a jab in the waters of the Waitematā.
E ngā rā o mua ‘in former times’ the banks of the local waterway were once festooned with the dazzling trails of the mudsnail in the riverbank paru. These patterns are the result of their processing the debris and detritus and nutrients of the kāhui maunga that finds its way down to the low point in the landscape. This visual phenomenon gave the local stream its name: Waitītiko.
‘Te Rongo’ opening 1 July, CRAVE. Photo: Albert Eden Neighbourhood Arts
The show behind me ‘Te Rongo’ is a tale of the trail of the tītiko and of one other – that which rangatahi leave in the early hours in the local carpark. It is their driftng, their burnouts, the whining engines struggling with their circling craziness that light up the quietness of this suburb. It is the constant deep pahu ‘thump of their bass that shakes our windows reminding us that they are definitely there, they too are marking out territory just as the tītiko once did.
Like the tītiko they too occupy a liminal space. ‘Amphibola crenata’ this uniquely breathing mollusc we locally call tītiko resides neither in the realm of Tangaroa nor of Tāne. Instead it lives somewhere between. Perhaps the challenge for us as locals is to acknowledge what this liminal state might also mean for our rangatahi. The challenge to mindfully process our environment and help draw out the nutritious good things seems a worthy way of both reflecting on the past and of planning for the future – the very things that Matariki encourages.
Na reira. Kanui te koa kua huihui mai nei. Kia ora mai anō tātou katoa.
He aha te hau e wawara mai. He tiu, he raki. Nāna i ā mai te pūpūtarakihi ki uta. E tikina atu e au te kōtiu. Koia te pou, te pou whakairo ka tū ki Waitematā. I ōku wairangi e.
Maori-Kunst sprechen ‘Let’s talk Māori Art’. This is part of the work I do with international clients helping them understand some of the key areas that make Māori a unique global artform. The kaupapa of my kōrero follows aspects of the book ‘Māori Art’ but is specifically related to objects or architecture in the Auckland central city area. I used to walk around Auckland landscapes and cultural collections with students but I find working with the public (individuals or small groups) just as challenging and, in a number of respects, more rewarding. If anyone is interested in looking further at what our small family based company Pihirau offers visit other areas of this site and also look at my other contributions in the publishers public site for the book ‘MĀORI ART, History, Architecture, Landscape and Theory‘: 
