a personal reflection

Rangihīroa Panoho

© Rangihīroa Panoho, 2019-2024. No part of this document (text or imagery if owned) is free to be copied, plagiarised or shared for publication or for uses neither intended nor agreed on by the author without his express permission. Details for writing to the author are as follows: blueskypanoho@icloud.com

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:

https://www.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/atoms/files/19922024-04-03-100656.pdf

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:

Panoho, A Search for Authenticity: Towards a Definition and Strategies for Survival, He Pukenga Kōrero, Koanga (Spring). Volume 2, Number 1. 1996

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:

https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F29519/

1. ‘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 ↩︎
2. 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 ↩︎
3. 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. ↩︎
4. 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 ↩︎