B.
Wainui, Akaroa by Rita Angus
Collection
This article first appeared as 'On view' in The Press on 15 June 2012.
Rita Angus Wainui, Akaroa
Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū; N Barrett Bequest Collection. Purchased 2010
Wainui is a popular destination for visitors to Akaroa harbour seeking to enjoy one of Canterbury's most beautiful coastal landscapes while at the same time avoid the tourist bustle that can at times overrun Akaroa township. It's one of my favourite spots in Akaroa harbour and provides a relaxed, laid back destination for day trippers from Christchurch with wonderfully broad views across the harbour and out to the spectacularly sheer cliff face of Timutimu Head at the harbour's entrance. Wainui is perhaps more well-known to generations of Canterbury school kids who have attended the seemingly obligatory school camp at the Wainui YMCA.
Wainui was also a place of respite for the Canterbury artist Rita Angus when she spent several weeks based at a friend's bach at the bay in early 1943. The resultant watercolurs produced during her stay, including the watercolour Wainui, Akaroa in the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū's collection, are amongst her best.
Wainui, Akaroa is one of the smallest watercolours in the collection (it measures a mere 192 x 182 mm) and yet it easily punches above its weight due to its jewel like presence and the remarkably detailed rendering of the scene by the artist. Angus's view, taken from above Wainui looking down towards the northern end of the bay with the road leading back towards French Farm and Barrys Bay, is one of high definition, almost as if the artist is viewing the landscape through a telescope. With its intense detail Wainui, Akaroa must have been a laborious process for the artist to complete and would have required much patience and focus to complete. It is perhaps of no surprise that she only painted in this manner for a short period around 1943 before giving way for a slightly more spontaneous approach.
Angus's move to Wainui from Christchurch in early 1943 was essentially to avoid the Industrial Manpower Committee who had contacted her about reporting for war work. She found Wainui charming and no doubt her experiences were enhanced by the warm summer weather and the bach she stayed in which was built on a rise overlooking the harbour opposite Akaroa, a relaxing and idyllic environment for anyone to work in.
Angus enjoyed sketching trips to Banks Peninsula and the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū owns no fewer than five watercolours by the artist depicting Akaroa Harbour which you can view on the Gallery's collection on-line website: http://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/
Related
Exhibition
He Rau Maharataka Whenua: A Memory of Land
18 February 2018
Canterbury modernist landscape painting from the collections of Te Puna o Waiwhetū Christchurch Art Gallery, poignantly revised from within a Kāi Tahu perspective
Collection
Rita Angus Wainui, Akaroa
'What makes Wainui significant, apart from its status as a mahika kai [food gathering area] for mussels and karengo [an edible seaweed], is that it sits beneath Tuhiraki [a mountain on Banks Peninsula, across the harbour from Akaroa]. It’s the beginning of the South Island’s traditional history. The metaphor is used that the atua [demi-god] Rākaihautū is striking his kō [digging stick] named Tuhiraki into the ground, creating, making, discovering the lakes. The furthest one south he creates is Lake Whakatipu Waitai, also known as Lake McKerrow, at the top end of Fiordland. Rākaihautū comes inland again and journeys up the eastern side of the island where he meets up with his son Rokohuia – I think around Waihao in south Canterbury at Wainono Lagoon, one of the historic hāpua [lagoons] of Kāi Tahu. Father and son are then joyously reunited to the settlement of Akaroa, which they developed. When they get there, Rākaihautū places his kō across the ridge of the hill above Wainui and changes the name to Tuhiraki – and it’s been a treasured name ever since. The French came and called it Mount Bossu, the hunchback; the hunch is the foot of the kō. The renaming has been attended to now.
'This is the base below Tuhiraki [also known as Mount Bossu]. It’s a mahika kai [food gathering area]. What’s important is the narrative in the hill. From Akaroa, you look across to Wainui, all the way along the peninsula and out over the heads. This is traditionally the centre of the evolution of Waitaha occupation [the Waitaha were an early people who occupied the South Island prior to the Kāti Māmoe and then Kāi Tahu people]. The march of Rākaihautū [the first ancestor of the Waitaha people] and his son Rokohuia gives the ancient name of Canterbury: Kā Pākihi-Whakatekateka-A-Waitaha, the strutting joyous march of Waitaha.' —Sir Tipene O’Regan
(He Rau Maharataka Whenua: A Memory of Land, 17 September 2016 – 18 February 2017)