Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art is a massive undertaking, the largest since the doors opened in 1888. Swelling to fill the entire gallery with moving image, waiata, sculpture, painting, whakairo (carving), jewellery, raranga (weaving), hue (gourds), uku (ceramics) and the installations of over 133 contributing artists, thus far Toi Tū Toi Ora has attracted over 100 000 visitors.
The exhibition is so large it comes with its own map, to assist in navigating the 20 individual themed sections and offsite components such as the mammoth Shane Cotton mural Maunga which rises to over five levels on the exterior of an historic building in the Britomart precinct.
Toi Tū Toi Ora, in both ambition and scale – consisting of over 300 individual artworks – is unprecedented. One of its many legacies will be the future response to a simple yet inescapable question: who is the tuākana and who is the tēina of the culture of this country?
The colonial history of Aotearoa New Zealand has been predicated on the assumption that Pākehā are the tuākana … but as this exhibition makes abundantly clear, Māori are Mana Whenua.
Tuākana, tēina is a Te Reo Māori term which refers to the whakawhanaungatanga (relationship building) and obligations between older and younger siblings. Think big brother/sister, little brother/sister. So at its best these relationships are a joyride of shared experience and not a little aroha; at their worst…fill in the blanks as appropriate. The colonial history of Aotearoa New Zealand has been predicated on the assumption that Pākehā are the tuākana: setting frames of reference, installing a political system, enacting laws…being in charge – and that Māori are the tēina, recipients of decisions and the occasional largesse; students of their own culture and history.
But as this exhibition makes abundantly clear, Māori are Mana Whenua. The uncompromising assertion of this authority is the pūmanawa or beating heart of an abundant display of tino rangatiratanga that transforms the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki into a great waka huia. The radicality of the curatorial kaupapa of Toi Tū Toi Ora is that it proposes the original, and by definition, more legitimate, artistic canon of Aotearoa.
Similar thinking is taking place right now in the literary world. Victoria University of Wellington Associate-Professor Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Ātiawa) cut right to the chase earlier this year in the Guardian with her article headlined ‘Canons don’t just belong to dead white Englishmen, We have a Māori Canon Too.’
That Tangata Whenua are finally getting the keys to Dad’s car in the form of institutional critique and a little agenda setting only serves to highlight the introspective earnestness of the New Zealand ‘project’ over the last 70 odd years.
After WWII a huge amount of sweaty, cultural energy was devoted to the establishment of the New Zealand canon. The job of the day was to locate, define and disperse the essential ingredients of the New Zealand condition. By the mid-1960s this quest had coagulated into a not particularly nourishing gruel of frustrated European, hetero, masculine isolation. The avatars strode about, lonely as a cloud, in a ‘landscape with too few lovers’ or drowned their sorrows at the six o’clock swill.
Toi Tū Toi Ora literally clearfells a path through such notions, by laying down a pathway that begins before time as we know it and articulating a world view by Tangata Whenua, but for all who care to embrace it . We are not here for an exercise in the Pākehā art history of New Zealand. That canon has had ample airtime in recent decades.
So, what you will see from the get-go at the Auckland Art Gallery, is not the angst of the diffident, self-conscious culture constructors struggling to wrestle a ‘tuakana’ history of art in Aotearoa into existence, but the assertive voices of long-subordinated tēina, whose own whakapapa emerges as more than capable of populating the entire gallery.
This exhibition literally spreads its wings from one the great opening sections in living memory. By following the chronicle of the Māori creation story, (now former) curator Māori Nigel Borell (Ngāti Rangunui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Te Whakatōhea, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Apakura) establishes the primacy of the Māori narrative to dazzling effect.
Te Kore or the empty faceless, void greets the visitor with primeval darkness. Time itself is yet to be defined. Te Kore transforms into a period of perpetual night – Te Pō. Works by Peter Robinson (Kāi Tahu), Robert Jahnke (Ngai Taharora, Te Whānau a Iretekura, Te Whānau a Rakairoa o Ngāti Porou), Lisa Reihana (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Tūteauru), Reuben Paterson (Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngai Tūhoe, Tūhourangi) and Ralph Hotere’s (Te Aupōuri) suite of reductive 1970s Black Paintings are born again in the service of this foundation kaupapa.
That an idea literally as old as the hills could present with a stinging sense of the shock of the new has been sheeted home to me in numerous anecdotal conversations, with both visitors and gallery staff. The summary of these is that for many Pākehā the existence of the Māori creation pūrākau was something they were either (a) not aware of, or (b) dimly aware of, but had little knowledge of, or (c) now felt compelled to learn more about. The didactic urgency of Toi Tū Toi Ora might be its greatest legacy.
Borell explained his curatorial vision at the time of the exhibition opening to Leonie Hayden (Ngāti Whatua o Kaipara, Ngāti Rango) at the Spinoff.co.nz.
“I wanted to ground it in Māori worldview, as opposed to the western fine art world telling us where we fit into the art scene. Even the diverse understandings of the creation narrative… was the one thing that we as Māori all had in common, so it became the elemental way of introducing a conversation about contemporary Māori art… If we’re going to deconstruct the western art canon, then it’s about seeing us as a collective across generations. We’re having conversations with each other across time”
The heft, the weight and the ‘tino-ness’ of Toi Tū Toi Ora will also be a lasting memory – the vastness of it all is something many observers have commented on. Writing at Pantograph Punch, Ngahuia Harrison (Ngāti Wai, Ngāpuhi) herself an exhibiting artist with the photographic frieze Coastal Cannibals, describes needing a lie-down with a bag of cold peas pressed to her head after her first encounter with Toi Tū Toi Ora. But after regaining composure, her response is emphatic, “returning is what this show demands of you”.
I’ve taken this advice at face value since the opening in December, visiting many times, allowing each new encounter to whakanui or enlarge my reading of the many threads of Toi Tū Toi Ora. As the sections gather momentum, Te Pō shifts into Te Wehenga o Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku (the separation of Rangi and Papa) and thence onto Te Aō Marama (the world of light and life). The whakareretanga or flow of the exhibition reveals itself as a graceful hīkoi throughout the entire architectural complex of the gallery. For long-time visitors this haerenga or journey into and around the gallery is a pleasure in its own right.
For a visitor in the final week (hopefully you dear reader) the transition from dark to light will be the first and perhaps most memorable experience of Toi Tū Toi Ora. As you move about the gallery your eyes will inexorably be drawn to some of the ‘megafauna’ of Māori contemporary art of the last 50 years or so: those two great elephants in the Grey Gallery, Te Ao Hurihuri by Michael Parekowhai (Ngā Ariki, Ngāti Whakarongo) or Peter Robinson’s withering Strategic Plan in the final section entitled Te Poropiti me te Whakapātari – Prophecy and Provocation, are impossible to ignore. You’ll be stopped in your tracks by the lifesize ceramic tableau Nga Morehu (the survivors) by Shona Rapira-Davies (Ngātiwai), the centrepiece of Kei te Eke Panuku te Wahine – Women Far Walking.
Ahakoa hei iti, hei pounamu is a well-known whakataukī or proverb which translates as: although it is small, it is a great treasure. Given the scale of the works mentioned above it is easy to be dazzled and miss some of the smaller kahurangi or gems of Toi Tū Toi Ora. These are numerous and shine on repeat visits. Some I unreservedly recommend seeking out include:
The suite of 20 photographs entitled Māori artists and writers/Nga Puna Waihanga series by John Miller (Ngāpuhi, Ngaitewake-Ki-Uta). Photographer Miller has been on the front line in Aotearoa for over 50 years. This 1973 hui at Te Kaha on the Bay of Plenty coast could be described as laying the foundations for Toi Tū Toi Ora. A group of hugely influential Māori writers, artists and political thinkers came together to debate the way forward. Miller’s photographs capture many of the scene’s movers and shakers, such as Syd Jackson, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Hone Tuwhare, Witi Ihimaera, Tama Iti, Ralph Hotere and Hana Jackson congregating at the Hone Taiapa carved wharenui Tukaki.
Hinetītama by Robyn Kahukiwa (Ngāti Porou, Te Atianga-a-Hauiti, Ngāti Kōnohi, Te Whānau-a-Ruataupare). Hinetītama, the dawn maiden, is a central figure within the layers of Toi Tū Toi Ora as a potent symbol of mana wahine. Kahukiwa’s 1980 oil on board renders her in blazing colour as befits her role as the conduit between the underworld and the world of light.
The Beauty of Invisible Grief by Jasmine Te Hira (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi, Cook Islands, England). This moving-image digital work speaks to the agency of taonga across generations. Her ice tiki is composed from water sourced from her ancestral awa near the Hokianga. As the tiki melts it leaves a tangible record of its mauri (life force) on the skin of the artist.
Lonely Crowd by Kāterina Mataira (Ngāti Porou) is found in the section entitled Ko te Hauora me te Oranga Tonutanga – Towards Health and Wellbeing. Mataira was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand order of merit in 1998 for services to Māori language. Amongst her many achievements was her role in the creation of the Te Ataarangi language learning program. The two canvasses in the exhibition by Mataira are amongst the ‘hidden’ highlights. Lonely Crowd presents at first as an elegant compositional exercise, but soon comes into focus as a view from above of an intimate gathering of praying or mourning figures.
Rangi Kipa (Te Āti Awa Nui Tonu, Ngāti Tama ki te Tau Ihu, Ngāti Maniapoto) Kipa’s Wahaika patu form in whalebone with pāua inlay features an interlacing Pūhoro and Kirikiore motif of wonderful intricacy, one of many highly-skilled works in the section He Taonga Rerehua, he Taonga Monoa – Objects of Beauty, Objects of Desire that focuses on body adornment.
Many of the works within Toi Tū Toi Ora speak to a thousand years of image and object-making within Māori traditions and are emblematic of the whakataukī Ka Mua, Ka Muri which expresses the concept of walking backwards into the future. For Māori that future looks increasingly positive as they gain more agency at government level and, as this exhibition so ably articulates, are the creators of such potent responses to their whakapapa and the challenges of the 21st century.
But the colonial past dislocated many iwi from their vital cultural knowledge or Mātauranga Māori. In correspondence with Kipa, the artist noted that the colonial project with its “multiple layers of land use change…[made] it hard for our people to remember who they are when the land that fashioned their existence has been modified outside of their recognition”.
So the proposition of a ‘new’ canon of art, predicated on the centrality of the Māori world view – that enables remembering, is timely and welcome. There is whakamanatanga (validation and empowerment) for all New Zealanders amongst the myriad mahi toi currently on exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery, but only a few days remain to engage kanohi ki te kanohi – face to face. Mauri Ora.
Toi Tū Toi Ora – Further Resources:
For the final days of the exhibition curator Nigel Borell will be leading daily tours of the exhibition commencing at 12.30pm.
Although Toi Tū Toi Ora concludes this weekend, Auckland Art Gallery has and is creating numerous resources for the exhibition’s ongoing resonance.
These include a superb tri-lingual (English, Māori and Mandarin) digital tour which can be accessed via virtual.aucklandartgallery.com.
Friday May 21 at 6pm: Ka whawhai tonu tāua: A feisty conversation about Māori-Pākehā relations led by Te Kawehau Hoskins (Ngāti Hau, Ngāpuhi) Pro-Vice Chancellor (Māori) at the University of Auckland and Alison Jones (Pākehā), professor at Te Puna Wānanga School of Māori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland. Link to event details here.
Toi Tū Toi Ora: Visual Sovereignty, a documentary by director Chelsea Winstanley featuring a soundtrack by Maree Sheehan and narration by Taika Waititi is currently in production – a preview can be viewed with this link.
