B.

The relationship between tākata and whenua—people and land—is a long thread that weaves through the art history of Aotearoa New Zealand. Across nearly 400 pages, writers, academics, artists and art historians explore the many ways of understanding how whenua has informed our art and culture—from toi ana, the earliest cave drawings, to the sublime landscapes of early European colonisers, to the modernist search for identity in art, to contemporary artists responding to colonisation and environmentalism.

Curatorial overview:

The human history of Aotearoa New Zealand begins with takata whenua. Therefore, to begin to understand our identity as a country, we must listen to the first stories of this whenua: of Takaroa, Papatūānuku and Rakinui; of Aoraki and his waka; of Parawhenuamea and Rakahore and the many more narratives told over generations that explain the creation and naming of these lands. As Hana O’Regan explains in the book’s opening essay, these stories are “embedded in the very shape of the land itself”.

Any true understanding must include how colonisation—the forceful taking of Māori land and the imposition of Eurocentric language and laws onto a place and people with existing language, values and tikaka—continues to impact our relationships with the whenua. From this standpoint, Whenua revisits how the land has been, and is, seen and represented in the art of Aotearoa, within a framework that centres whakapapa, kaitiakitaka and memory.

This book emerged out of He Kapuka Oneone—A Handful of Soil, an expansive, many-layered exhibition of artworks from the collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. Exploring ideas of kaitiakitaka, environmentalism, land use, migration and activism through historical and contemporary artworks, Whenua brings together a rich variety of voices and perspectives affirming the innumerable ways that the land has informed identity and belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Whenua begins in the takiwā of Kāi Tahu, the tribal group of much of Te Waipounamu South Island, and reaches outwards, across Aotearoa and beyond to Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific. Essays, interviews, artworks and other responses offer opportunities to consider the many ways that land has been viewed, understood, related to and used—and how it has reflected and shaped us in return.

As takata whenua, Māori hold fundamental and long-established ancestral relationships with whenua. Pākehā and tauiwi share deep connections to this landscape, as well as to other places around the world. For Māori, reflecting on the essential connection between land and identity brings the wrenching pain of losses caused by colonisation, while for Pākehā it includes responsibilities in relation to that history. Those who have journeyed to these motu from elsewhere sometimes grapple with the challenge of how to anchor themselves here while keeping their connections to other places alive. For all of us, where we come from is inseparable from our sense of self. As we have become increasingly aware throughout the commissioning and development of this book, individual relationships with the land of Aotearoa are as unique as they are universal. The art made on, and of, this whenua can provide a potent way to sit with and explore these complex, emotionally charged ideas. So much is contained in a handful of soil. 

—Chloe Cull (Kāi Tahu, Kāi Te Ruahikihiki), Ken Hall, Felicity Milburn, Melanie Oliver and Peter Vangioni 

 

 List of contents:

Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au
I am the land, and the land is me
Artwork selection and texts by Chloe Cull

Featuring artworks by Robyn Kahukiwa, Louise Pōtiki Bryant, Shannon Te Ao, Connor Clarke, John Bevan Ford, Mere Lodge, Lonnie Hutchinson, Buck Nin, Marilyn Webb, Nathan Pōhio, Cora-Allan, Ross Hemera

Hana O’Regan—Toitū te whenua: Whatukarokaro te takata, toitū te whenua—People die, but the land remains

Cora-Allan in conversation with Felicity Milburn
Rachel Solomon—The original art galleries

Me he mauka teitei
To a lofty mountain
Artwork selection and texts by Ken Hall

Featuring artworks by William Fox, James Crowe Richmond, John Gully, Edmund Gouldsmith, John Gibb, Thomas Selby Cousins, Edwin Sandys, Laurence William Wilson, Edwyn Temple, Petrus van der Velden, Herbert Deveril, John Macintosh Madden, Charles Worsley, William George Baker, Herbert Horridge, Rata Lovell-Smith, Margaret Stoddart, Dorothy Kate Richmond, Esther Studholme Hope, Conor Clarke, Edward Sealy

Rebecca Rice—Re-wilding: New thoughts on old landscapes
Jenny Sew Hoy Agnew and Trevor Agnew—Sew Hoy Big Beach Dredging Claim, Shotover River
Jacinta Ruru—A cloaked landscape: Legal devices in Mount Aspiring National Park

 Te Waipounamu
The South Island
Artwork selection and texts by Peter Vangioni

Featuring artworks by Riki Manuel, Ranui Ngarimu, Colin Lovell-Smith, Rata Lovell-Smith, Rita Angus, Louise Henderson, Olivia Spencer Bower, Juliet Peter, Ivy Fife, Bill Sutton, Colin McCahon, Doris Lusk, Georgia Suiter [ Anna Day], Brenda Nightingale, Tony Fomison, Jeremy Leatinu'u, Mark Adams, Bridget Reweti

Riki Manuel and Ranui Ngarimu—Mihi to the whenua
Peter Vangioni—A clear admission of truth: Waitaha Canterbury landscape painters
Mark Adams and Bridget Reweti—Histories in the land

Ka whawhai tonu mātou!
We will fight on!
Artwork selection and texts by Chloe Cull

Featuring artworks by Robyn Kahukiwa, Areta Wilkinson, Gottfried Lindauer, William Dunning, Ralph Hotere, Shona Rapira Davies, Diane Prince, Robert Jahnke, Emily Karaka, John Miller, Emily Parr

Emily Karaka—Toi tautohetohe
Emily Parr—Hīkoi Whenua, 4 August 2019
Matariki Williams—A land without meaning

Kai raro i te kāuru
Understories of the forests
Artwork selection and texts by Felicity Milburn

Featuring artworks by William Fox, James Crowe Richmond, John Gully, Edmund Gouldsmith, John Gibb, Thomas Selby Cousins, Edwin Sandys, Laurence William Wilson, Edwyn Temple, Petrus van der Velden, Herbert Deveril, John Macintosh Madden, Charles Worsley, William George Baker, Herbert Horridge, Rata Lovell-Smith, Margaret Stoddart, Dorothy Kate Richmond, Esther Studholme Hope, Conor Clarke, Edward Sealy

Madison Kelly—Rimu kind of rhythm

 

 

 

He puna kai tau atu, tau mai
A source of food, year after year
Artwork selection and texts by Felicity Milburn

Featuring artworks by Areta Wilkinson, Mark Adams, William Menzies Gibb, John Gibb, James Lawson Balfour, Robert Askew Gill, Archibald Nicoll, Doris Lusk, Ida Mary Lough, Joanna Margaret Paul, Simon Kaan, Kim Lowe, Vanessa Wairata Edwards, Pauline Rhodes

Maire Kipa—Whakapai te whenua, whakapai te takata

Te oraka o te takata, he whenua, he oneone
The wellbeing of the people comes from the land and the soil
Artwork selection and texts by Chloe Cull 

Featuring artworks by Mark Adams, Areta Wilkinson, Alexis Neal, Russell Clark, Matavai Taulangau, Jimmy Ma‘ia‘i, Kaihaukai Collective, Bing Dawe, Cheryl Lucas, Olivia Spencer Bower, Juliet Peter, Toss Woollaston, Rosemary Johnson, Margaret Ryley, Judy McIntosh Wilson, Nancy Mason, Te Kāhui Hono, Baye Pewhairangi Riddell, Wi Te Tau Pirika Taepa, Colleen Waata Urlich, Hana Rakena, Tracy Keith, Sarah Hudson, John Pule, Sorawit Songsataya, Jacquelyn Greenbank, Bev Moon

Paora Tapsell—Kāore te kūmara e kōrero mō tōna ake reka
Kaihaukai Collective—Mana i te whenua: Relationships with place and sovereignty
Cosmo Kentish-Barnes—Agriculture beneath the nor’west arch
Chloe Geoghegan—A sense of place
Kirsty Dunn—Upane I / Upane II
Emalani Case—Beneath our feet
Lily Lee—From Zhongshan to Aotearoa New Zealand
Bev Moon and Jacquelyn Greenbank—Belonging

Toitū te whenua
The land endures
Artwork selection and texts by Melanie Oliver

Featuring artworks by Margaret Stoddart, Bill Hammond, Doris Lusk, John Johns, William Fox, Janine Randerson, Natalie Robertson, Denise Copland, Andrew Drummond, Ralph Hotere, Marilyn Webb, John Miller, Bing Dawe, James Oram, John Vea, Angela Tiatia, Adam Ben-Dror, Xin Cheng, Melissa Macleod

Melanie Oliver—Toitū te taiao: Art and environment in Aotearoa
Su Ballard and Huhana Smith—Tuia te muka tāngata: Binding people together for te taiao