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Kelcy Taratoa Te Tāhū o ngā Maunga Tūmatakahuki 2020. Acrylic paint on wall. Commissioned by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū
Massive wall painting marks opening of Te Wheke at Christchurch Art Gallery
Media Release
A 36-metre painting by artist Kelcy Taratoa is part of a new exhibition opening at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū on Saturday.
The vast, vivid wall painting, spanning the Gallery’s outer east wall, was commissioned to accompany the major new exhibition Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania.
Lead curator Felicity Milburn says Taratoa’s artwork weaves together a story of exploration and connection, in line with Te Wheke’s wider themes of navigation, belonging and identity.
“Echoing the overlapping forms of the Māori art of tukutuku, this painting is about everything that binds us together, from the ocean to the stars.”
“Within the painting’s abstract composition are islands, a maunga (mountain) and kāhui whetū (cluster of stars). They relate to early voyages of discovery across the Pacific and how whakapapa (genealogy) can unite people in a common kaupapa, or purpose.”
Best viewed from Worcester Boulevard, Te Tāhū o ngā Maunga Tūmatakahuki replaces Kay Rosen's Here are the people and there is the steeple, which had occupied the wall since 2012.
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania is an immersive exhibition that explores art through our connections with the Pacific.
Developed by the Gallery’s curators in collaboration with Stephanie Oberg, an independent writer and curator of Cook Islands heritage, Milburn says Te Wheke is an opportunity to view Christchurch’s art collection from a new perspective – from Moana-nui-a-kiwa (the Pacific Ocean) outwards.
Te Wheke: Pathways across Oceania opens at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū on Saturday 30 May 2020. Entry is free.
Related reading: Te Wheke
Exhibition
Kelcy Taratoa: Te Tāhū o ngā Maunga Tūmatakahuki
3 July 2022
A vast painting by Kelcy Taratoa about how we are bound together.
Commentary
Temples for Curious Minds
I want to tell you a story. A ‘curiodyssey’ (which by the way, I thought I’d made up but is the name of an actual museum in California). So, a curiodyssey of happy places, told through the science of wellbeing.
Commentary
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
Every few years, the curatorial team at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū embarks on a major rehang of the first-floor collection area. It’s no small undertaking finding fresh ways to combine long-held, well-known works and new acquisitions, looking for combinations that will offer compelling viewing, immersive storytelling and intellectual engagement to our wide and evolving visitor base. This time, director Blair Jackson added another dimension to our task, challenging us to reimagine the physical orientation of the spaces to encourage visitors to interact with the architecture in a completely different way.
Commentary
The Seas are Rising: So Are We
In Te Ao Māori the whakataukī “He toka tū moana” pays homage to the rock that withstands the sea as a metaphor for human strength in our cultural or political beliefs, whatever may come. But while the rock is steadfast, the octopus Te Wheke is a shape-shifter, canny and malleable.
Commentary
Where in the World? Placing New Zealand in the Pacific
“It is a strange fact that New Zealand can be literally all at sea in the Pacific Ocean, and yet pay that ocean, and neighbours and relations within it, so little attention.”
— Damon Salesa, Sāmoan historian
“… this small and very British country is producing some honest and lively artists whose eyes open upon a land not at all like England, but whose minds are formed in the living tradition of Western culture.”
— Helen Hitchings, New Zealand gallerist
Commentary
Identities of Journey and Return
It was the novelty of seeing white people rendered by a Japanese artist that tickled me when I first saw Utagawa Sadahide’s woodblock prints of foreigners in Yokohama in the 1860s. There’s something slightly clumsy about the Westerners’ exaggerated noses and the forced rounding of their eyes. You can sense, in these images, the artist’s struggle to detach himself from the conventions of Japanese art and beauty; his lines waver here, unlike his assertive depictions of long, flat Japanese faces in earlier prints.
Notes
Te Wheke celebrates Ōtautahi Christchurch’s place in the Pacific
An immersive exhibition that explores art through our connections with the Pacific will be unveiled at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū on 30 May.
Notes
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
Welcome – nau mai haere mai. Kei Te Ararau o Tangaroa / Pathways Across Oceania is an attempt to understand the Gallery’s collection from the perspective of our place in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean. Full of stories of migration, connection and belonging, this huge new exhibition reflects the connections and tensions that shape our past, present and future.
Notes
Hawaiki Tautau Atu, Hawaiki Tautau Mai / A Distance Draws Near
Hawaiki is the ancient homeland of Polynesian people who navigated the seas in double-hulled waka from Rarotonga, Tahiti and Ra’iātea to the islands of the Pacific Ocean, including Aotearoa New Zealand.
Notes
Ātea
In te ao Māori, the state of a space when cleared of obstruction is called ātea. This concept was brought to Aotearoa New Zealand from the islands of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa / the Pacific Ocean by Polynesian ancestors.
Notes
Kanohi Ki Te Kanohi / Face To Face
In te ao Māori, portraiture can encompass rangatiratanga (stewardship), whanaungatanga (kinship or connectedness), manaakitanga (kindness towards others) and whakapapa (ancestral genealogy). A sense of wairua (the spirit of a person) also resonates within these treasured portraits.
Notes
Ko Enei Tauira Ataahua / These Beautiful Patterns
From a present-day perspective, the appropriation of customary Māori art forms and practice by Pākehā artists can be disconcerting, a more-than-awkward crossing of cultural lines.
Notes
I Tawhiti Ra Ano / From Distant Shores
The islands of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa / the Pacific were settled by remarkable ocean voyagers over many thousands of years. Aotearoa New Zealand was peopled through major waves of migration from the 1200s and later the mid-1800s. The seas of Oceania are like vast pathways; ever-present reminders of distant shores.
Notes
Paerangi / The Fold in the Sky
The connection between land and sky is important in te ao Māori. In Māori creation, Papatūānuku (the earth mother) was separated from Ranginui (the sky father) by their children, creating Te Ao Mārama, the world of light.
Notes
He Ara / Pathways
Aotearoa New Zealand is part of a submerged Pacific continent, which broke away from the Gondwana supercontinent millions of years ago to create two major islands – Te Ika a Māui / the North Island and Te Waipounamu / the South Island.
Notes
Puta Noa I Te Ao / In the World
Artists from Aotearoa New Zealand are often well-travelled. Feeling the distance of Aotearoa from the world’s centres of art, they have often been drawn overseas to study and work, contributing to the art history of their adopted countries as well as this one.
Notes
He Toka Tū Moana
The Māori whakataukī or proverb “He toka tū moana” uses the image of a rock that stands firmly in the ocean to describe someone steadfast and strong in their culture or beliefs, who defies all opposition.
Director's Foreword
Director’s Foreword
Welcome to the autumn issue of Bulletin. Here at the Gallery, we’re about to move into a major changeover as we rehang our upstairs collection galleries. When they reopen again on 10 April, the whole space will have been given over to a major new exhibition.
Exhibition
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
Experience the Gallery’s collection from the perspective of our place in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean.