Approaching the top of the Waiatoto, a remote and difficult-to-access southern Te Tai Poutini West Coast valley, William Baker was rewarded with an excellent vantage point from which to paint the snowy inclines of Tititea Mount Aspiring. Tititea means ‘glistening peak’, and also refers to an important Waitaha rakatira. Following a familiar colonial pattern, the mountain was renamed in 1857 by Otago Province chief surveyor J. T. Thomson. The word ‘aspiring’ was chosen in response to the mountain’s skyward grandeur.

Waitaha ~ tribal group that occupied much of Te Waipounamu South Island before they were displaced by Kāti Māmoe

rakatira ~ person of high rank, chief, leader

This video work is part of a larger project called Nirun, the Thai word for eternal – a timespan that connects ancient histories and future possibilities. In it, Sorawit Songsataya collapses the distances between times and places, imagining layered relationships between materials and species, learning and loss, home and elsewhere.

The artist would like to thank Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou, Kāti Huirapa Rūnaka ki Puketeraki, Te Rūnanga o Moeraki and Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu for their permission and support in working with Ōamaru limestone and filming in Central Otago, and acknowledges mana whenua of Kāti Māhaki ki Makaawhio, Poutini Ngāi Tahu, as kaitiaki of the takiwā where the kōtuku nest.

This video work is part of a larger project called Nirun, the Thai word for eternal – a timespan that connects ancient histories and future possibilities. In it, Sorawit Songsataya collapses the distances between times and places, imagining layered relationships between materials and species, learning and loss, home and elsewhere.

The artist would like to thank Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou, Kāti Huirapa Rūnaka ki Puketeraki, Te Rūnanga o Moeraki and Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu for their permission and support in working with Ōamaru limestone and filming in Central Otago, and acknowledges mana whenua of Kāti Māhaki ki Makaawhio, Poutini Ngāi Tahu, as kaitiaki of the takiwā where the kōtuku nest.

Windsor Great Park in England was set aside in the eleventh century as a personal hunting ground by William the Conqueror, supplying Windsor Castle with deer, boar and fish as well as wood. The park endured as a domain of royal privilege; by the early nineteenth century, hunting there was still restricted to royalty, aristocrats and individuals with connections to the monarchy.

(Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024)