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What’s On
Raymond McIntyre: A Modernist View
New exhibition now open.
Living Archives
Archives that tell stories about artists and history in Aotearoa
Whāia te Taniwha
Māori artists consider the enduring relevance of taniwha in Aotearoa.
E tuwhera ana te wharetoi i kā rā e 7 o te wiki, 10am - 5pm
Ka tuwhera ki te 9pm i kā pō Wenerei
Open 7 days, 10am - 5pm
Late night Wednesday until 9pm
Uruka utukore, ahokore utukore
Free entry, free wifi
Article
New Acquisition
Aratohu is an extraordinary new film by artist Lisa Reihana (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tūteauru, Ngāi Tūpoto). A surrealist fable told over the course of a single evening, Aratohu explores destructive influences and the potential for healing. For lead character Wairangi, a fun night out turns into a journey of self-discovery, as reality and hallucination blur and overlap. Following an encounter with Stealer, a sinister figure representing risk and temptation, Wairangi meets Aratohu, an ancestral being offering an alternative pathway, underpinned by renewed strength in her Māori identity.
Artist Profile
He Kuru Pounamu
Jen Rendall (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe) has explored ancestral narratives and the entwinements of plant life, waterways and landscapes in her works for some time. As a member of Paemanu Ngāi Tahu Contemporary Visual Arts, she has participated in significant exhibitions which honour Kāi Tahu relationships to whenua, including Tauraka Toi: A Landing Place at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2021. More recently, her work was included in Kia Ora Whaea – an exploration of Māori motherhood and Indigenous perspectives and experiences of maternity shown at the Corban Estate Arts Centre in Tāmaki Makarau, which also included work by fellow Kāi Tahu contemporaries Turumeke Harrington and Alix Ashworth.
Interview
What Taniwha Might Be Telling Us
Carl Mika (Tuhourangi, Ngāti Whanaunga) is a professor and head of school at Aotahi: Māori and Indigenous Studies, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha University of Canterbury. His colleague Garrick Cooper (Ngāti Whanaunga, Ngāti Ranginui) is an associate professor at Aotahi.
What follows is Kirsty Dunn’s attempt to kōrero with her esteemed colleagues about references to taniwha in their mahi. This is a truncated version of an hour-long conversation in which they delve into Te Pō and talk about (or perhaps around?) taniwha a while…
Commentary
Taniwha
Taniwha narratives invoked in small rooms on warm nights of a Hokianga summer, or in big rooms with dirt floors by a Te Reinga river. Hine Kōrako, Poutini, Ngārara Huarau, Whatipū, Ngake and Whātaitai, names repeated and tethered to history from the mouths of generations of sovereign peoples. We wanted more, my tiny cousins and I, we believed in daydreaming and night-flying, viscous trails and portals underground.
Article
The problem with your neck
First he sent me a photo of a rainbow dolphin, which made me laugh because it’s the exact opposite of my personality and he knew that. Then I found a GIF of Dick Van Dyke in double denim riding a dolphin, bouncing on it in automated joy and when I sent it back, it made him laugh. I love that dolphin he said. But maybe both of us are sharks.
Artist Profile
Whakahikohiko
On stepping into Francine Spencer’s home, what I notice first are the small, glittering points of light, scattered around the room like tiny, flickering whetū. But these aren’t gifts from Rakinui – these starlike specks are made of copper, Fran’s choice of material for her work in the upcoming exhibition Whāia te Taniwha.
Commentary
As far as the hawk-eye can see
I doubt that any printer’s first book has proved more wholly apposite than Pathway To The Sea, printed by Alan Loney in 1975 at his newly founded Hawk Press. There is propriety in the contributors. The writer, Ian Wedde, achieved prominence as a poet and critic, as Loney has; the cover artist, Ralph Hotere, believed strongly in the crosspollination of art and literature, as Loney does. And there is propriety in the title, which poetically evokes Loney’s trajectory in Aotearoa New Zealand. Born in 1940 in Te Awakairangi Lower Hutt, he came to printing through poetry. In 1971, he typeset his first collection, The Bare Remembrance, at Trevor Reeves’s Caveman Press in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Hawk Press was set up at Te Onepoto Taylors Mistake and later travelled with Loney from Ōtautahi Christchurch to the Kāpiti Coast and Ōkiwi Eastbourne. After its closure in 1983, he established further presses in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington and Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. In 1998, he left Aotearoa, crossing Te Tai-o-Rehua Tasman Sea and alighting in Naarm Melbourne, where he settled permanently in 2001.
Artist Profile
Hye Rim Lee
The laptop fires up and a dreamlike virtual world materialises. Exquisite peacocks – glassy black, ethereal white – emerge on a moonlit stage, framed by icy blue branching patterns. A cast of swans glide through a luminous, rippling lake in measured arcs, their movements both urgent and graceful. In other scenes, two royal lovers – bound by fate, divided by unseen forces – circle one another, mirroring gestures of longing and hesitation.
Commentary
Peter Robinson
Physically imposing yet also vaguely laughable, the burnt- wood-veneer aluminium works in this exhibition call back to Robinson’s previous engagements with obstinately artificial materials, such as polystyrene and felt. However, compared to the almost histrionic theatricality of some older works, these “charcoal drawings” are comically dour, although it would be a mistake to interpret this faux-minimalist posture as purely ironic.