A Portrait - 19

At the Opening

Te Hokinga Mai

Ngai Tahu Treasures

Canterbury Museum

February 2010. Ajr

One Stick, Two Views

Tokotoko = Walking Stick
I photographed this one recently at the dawn ceremony that opened the Ngai Tahu exhibition, Te Hokinga Mai at Canterbury Museum.

www.ngaitahu.iwi.nz www.canterburymuseum.com

More From Mo Tatou

Te Hokinga Mai: Featuring Mo Tatou: The Ngai Tahu Whanui Exhibition from Te Papa and Mo Ka Uri: Taonga from Canterbury Museum, is a stunning show of artefacts and Maori treasures now showing at Canterbury Museum. Mo Tatou opened at Te Papa in Wellington in June 2006 and closed August 2009. It has been reworked to tour three South Island venues - in Christchurch, Dunedin and Southland.
A feature of the exhibition is the juxtaposition between the ancient and the new, the customary and the cutting edge; and many of the works from the Canterbury Museum collection featured in the Mo Ka Uri section of the exhibition, have never previously been exhibited. It includes a beautiful display of exquisitely crafted baskets and cloaks, and ancient carvings, rock art fragments and statues that ooze history and mystique. www.ngaitahu.iwi.nz www.canterburymuseum.com

Te Hokinga Mai - The Journey Home

At dawn this morning, the doors of the Robert McDougall Gallery at Canterbury Museum opened and Ngai Tahu whanau and invited dignatories made there way inside, in quiet procession, for the blessing of the taonga (treasures) that lay within. Te Kokinga Mai is a beautiful exhibition of Ngai Tahu taonga in two parts. It features the return home of Mo Tatou, the Ngai Tahu whanui exhibition that has been on display at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand for the last three years; and Mo Ka Uri: Ngai Tahu taonga from Canterbury Museum.

A crowd of 300-400 gathered for the early morning occasion and after a rousing welcome and whakanoa (blessing) by resident Ngai Tahu hapu, Ngai Tuahuriri we made our way inside. For most of us, it was a brief encounter -either a first time look, or a chance to welcome back the treasures that have been viewed by over 850,000 people at Te Papa over the last three years. It's a stunning show - beautifully conceived, with some wonderfully intricate shadows cast across the gallery walls. Each of the taonga is accompanied by a sprig of kawakawa leaves (as above) - this to represent the mauri or life force, the wairua or spirit of the treasures.

Mark Solomon, Kaiwhakahaere, Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu (left) and Kukupa Tirakatene (right) meeting manuhiri (guests) outside the gallery.

As Mark Solomon writes in the exhibition catalogue: "Mo Tatou: The Ngai Tahu Whanui Exhibition endeavours to reflect our values, traditions and aspirations as an iwi (tribe).....The exhibition tells us where we have come from, how we lived, who we were and who we are...." Now, after its highly successful showing at Te Papa, the exhibition has come home for the first part of its journey throughout Te Waipounamu (the South Island), where it will be exhibited in Christchurch, Otago and Southland.

The second part of the exhibition, 'Mo Ka Uri,' brings together an astonishing array of taonga from the vaults of Canterbury Museum that have never been shown before. Over 200 beautiful items are showcased - carvings, korowai (cloaks), kete (baskets), pounamu treasures and more. (It should be noted that the korowai shown in these photographs are not from the exhibition but were worn to celebrate the importance of the occasion). I have many more photographs from this morning's event, which I'll feature here over the coming weeks. And if you happen to be in Christchurch, a visit to Te Hokinga Mai is definitely worth your time. www.ngaitahu.iwi.nz

Maumahara - Remember

Yesterday I introduced the stunning cross-cultural works of Pakeha New Zealander, Jo Torr, which are featured in her exhibition ‘Nga Kakahu (The Cloaks),’ currently showing at Tauranga Art Gallery. (See below). Today, it seemed especially fitting that I follow that up with a Maori perspective on cross-cultural expression – ‘Maumahara / Remember’ Cloaks by Rokahurihia Ngarimu-Cameron (Te Whanau-a-Apanui, Whakatohea, Ngati Awa, Tuwharetoa, Ngati Airihi), which is now showing at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. Ngarimu-Cameron weaves Maori and Pakeha together by taking traditional Maori off-loom hand-weaving garments into contemporary art practice via adapted European loom weaving techniques. The show is the result of a 2-year project for her Master of Fine Arts programme with the Textiles Section of the School of Art at Te Kura Matatiniki ki Otago (Otago Polytecthnic).

Rokahurihia Ngarimu-Cameron was born in Opotiki in the late 1940’s and was raised by her grandmother, Rokahurihia, and her mother, Te Oti, in a whare ponga on the pā at Hāwai in the rohe (district) of Te Whānau-a-Apanui. (I wrote about Hawai on this blog a week or so ago. Click on it in the label line below to see the marae). The whare (house) that she was raised in had an earth floor, no electricity, no running water, a single door-opening and an outside toilet. Her grandmother, Rokahurihia was then in her seventies. “She was “tuturu Māori” – which meant that we lived in the ways of our ancestors. She could not speak English – so all my verbal communication with her was in Māori. She was a survivor of the Tarawera eruption and a staunch member of the Ringatū church. I bear her name (which means tumbling and turning rocks) and dedicate my mahi (work) to her and to my mother,” writes Ngarimu-Cameron in her degree text.

When you enter into the darkened hall of Canterbury Museum where the exhibition is staged, you can almost feel that sense of history. Ngarimu-Cameron comes from a long line of traditional Maori weavers – four generations of them in fact – and weaving was an integral part of her life growing up at Hawai – not only as an artistic medium but as an essential practical skill that provided everyday essentials like kete (baskets) for food gathering. For her Fine Arts project though, she wanted to experiment and push the boundaries of harakeke (flax) fibre using European technology. To that end, she had to develop a new technique that would enable her to use short lengths of harakeke fibre on a traditional loom – the loom that stood in the corridor outside her Polytech studio space.

“The idea began to take shape that I could make use of the loom in my work for my
Master’s degree. I thought of my tūpuna and the difficulties they had faced and
overcome, and through karakia I consolidated my determination to succeed. I became excited by the possibility of finding ways of retaining my Māori identity by adapting
my treasured Māori methods and resources – in particular whītau (flax fibre) – to use on the
loom. Holding on to my whītau was of prime importance. There were problems to be
solved here. Most workers at the looms used yarn wound on a shuttle which can be
thrown backwards and forwards. The length of strands of whītau is limited by length
of the flax-blade, and a shuttle is impractical. Perhaps for this reason, no-one, as far
as I know, had looked to the loom as a tool for weaving Māori cloaks using whītau,” write Ngarimu-Cameron.

Throughout her art practice, Ngarimu-Cameron has always worked towards reinstating and strengthening traditional tecniques and the use of traditional resources and their preparation. For this body of work she used traditional off-loom
technology and the many techniques involved with this, for example the tāniko technique on the kaitaka; hide preparation; traditional dyeing; and preparation of feathers and fibres. She has a passion for the current renaissance in Māori weaving which she says “preserves and honours the ancient ways of making the artifacts of our material culture.”
“It is through such practices that we remain connected to our traditions. However, it was also important for me to connect with European culture in Aotearoa and also to honour and respect the European components of my own heritage. This found its way into my practice via the use of plaids for tartan patterning,” she writes. For Ngarimu-Cameron, the whole project was very much about bridging the gap between Māori and European culture in Aotearoa / New Zealand. In my view she succeeds beyond expectations. Her cloaks are masterpieces – an intricate interweaving of fibres, threads, feathers, knots and twirls – much of it dyed traditionally using tanekaha (celery pine bark) and paru (black mud) – that left me speechless. And that doesn’t happen often! www.canterburymuseum.com www.rokahurihia.co.nz

Snare/Mahanga

A couple of days ago I followed the wonderful trail of whitebait photos from “White Baiters Never Lie,” which I featured here yesterday (below), all along Worcester Boulevard to the very last one outside the Robert McDougall Gallery, Canterbury Museum. Since I was there, it seemed an opportune moment to venture inside and check out another Christchurch Arts Festival exhibition, “Snare/Mahanga.” The show brings together the work of a small group of artists who were allowed ‘behind the scenes’ at Canterbury Museum, to get their inspiration from the museum’s ornithological collection. The resulting works are incredibly diverse but all touch upon the sensitive issues of conservation and extinction and feature already-extinct and rare birds like the kakapo, the beautiful huia and the Haast eagle. I didn’t have time to give the show just attention so I’ll be going back for another visit, but I did love Peter Maddon’s “Waka Huia,” which includes five beautiful taxidermied huia from the museum’s collection, complete with little labels tied around their claws; and Fiona Pardington’s delicious, velvety handprinted photograph, as shown in the image in the photographed catalogue below, is one I’m still thinking about two days later.

The painting shown on the catalogue cover is a detail from Geoff Dixon’s “Black/White (Old World/New World). Co-presented by festival sponsors, Te Runanga a Ngai Tahu, the exhibition also includes beautiful works by Maori artists including delicate silver and feather jewellery by Areta Wilkinson; wood carving by Caine Tauwhare, woven birds by Reihana Parata, painted rocks by Te Mairiki Williams and an exquisitely woven kit by Ranui Ngarimu to name a few. www.ngaitahu.iwi.nz http://www.canterburymuseum.com/ http://www.artsfestival.co.nz

Cloaked in History

Kaitorete Spit, Banks Peninsular. Aerial view. Feb. 2009. Ajr

This is an aerial view of Kaitorete Spit on Banks Peninsular that I took from a plane window on my way to Dunedin recently. It’s a place that intrigues me because of its fascinating history and its associations with early Maori. It was back in 2004 that one of the country’s most significant textile finds was unearthed here – tiny fragments of a Maori cloak carbon dated at around 1500AD, making it two centuries older than any cloak ever before found in New Zealand. (The oldest known cloak prior to the Kaitorete Spit find was a 17th century example unearthed in a Fiordland cave). Kaitorete Spit is around 6000 years old and is known to be one of the most ecologically and culturally important sites in New Zealand. It contains a remarkable collection of plants, several rare species of insects, reptiles and birds and it is of significant cultural value to Ngai Tahu for the fact that over 500 archaelogical sites – many of them ancient ovens and tool-making areas - have been found there. Archaeologists have also unearthed the charred remains of a small shelter, stones tools, a flounder midden, evidence of cooking ovens, pieces of kokowai (red ochre) traditionally used by Maori for painting and decorating, a second cloak fragment, pieces of woven sleeping mat, albatross bones, tools, pieces of roof thatch, part of a woven belt and a 600mm long segment of carved wood. All have been removed from the site and restored within the controlled environment of Canterbury Museum. www.canterburymuseum.com