Exhibitions
Events
On display
Discussing Max Hailstone's Treaty Works
Max Hailstone, Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Herald, South Island/Kapiti Sheet from the Treaty Signatures series, 1990. Silkscreen on paper. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 1991
Talk
Past event
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free
Gallery guide and artist Liz Bryce discusses the importance and significance of Max Hailstone's controversial Treaty Signatures.
This event is run in conjunction with the exhibition Max Hailstone: Te Ara Takahaka Tapuae / Points of Reference.
Related reading: Talk, New Zealand, Free event, Māori
Exhibition
Max Hailstone: Te Ara Takahaka Tapuae / Points of Reference
9 April – 28 August 2016
An exhibition of Max Hailstone's most controversial and important series, using the signatures of the rangatira (Māori chiefs) who signed New Zealand's Treaty of Waitangi in 1840
Collection
Max Hailstone Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Manukau/Kāwhia Sheet
For the exhibition, 'Max Hailstone: Te Ara Takahaka Tapuae / Points of Reference' (9 April – 28 August 2016) these works were accompanied by the following words of Max Hailstone.
“[T]hese marks were in all probability the first marks written by many of the chiefs as well as perhaps among the earliest examples of indigenous writing from New Zealand.”
“For the Māori people the prints represent much more than simple marks, they are part of their ancestors and as such maintain their spiritual qualities quite often moving them to tears or private reflection, quite unrelated to the Treaty’s political or legal relevance.”
“I decided to reproduce the Treaty from ‘the other side’ as it were, dealing only with the people and their signatures without which there would be no validity to the document whatsoever. This approach forces the viewer to become involved with the people and their very human contribution.”
Collection
Max Hailstone Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Cook Strait Sheet
For the exhibition, 'Max Hailstone: Te Ara Takahaka Tapuae / Points of Reference' (9 April – 28 August 2016) these works were accompanied by the following words of Max Hailstone.
“[T]hese marks were in all probability the first marks written by many of the chiefs as well as perhaps among the earliest examples of indigenous writing from New Zealand.”
“For the Māori people the prints represent much more than simple marks, they are part of their ancestors and as such maintain their spiritual qualities quite often moving them to tears or private reflection, quite unrelated to the Treaty’s political or legal relevance.”
“I decided to reproduce the Treaty from ‘the other side’ as it were, dealing only with the people and their signatures without which there would be no validity to the document whatsoever. This approach forces the viewer to become involved with the people and their very human contribution.”
Collection
Max Hailstone Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Waikato Heads Sheet
For the exhibition, 'Max Hailstone: Te Ara Takahaka Tapuae / Points of Reference' (9 April – 28 August 2016) these works were accompanied by the following words of Max Hailstone.
“[T]hese marks were in all probability the first marks written by many of the chiefs as well as perhaps among the earliest examples of indigenous writing from New Zealand.”
“For the Māori people the prints represent much more than simple marks, they are part of their ancestors and as such maintain their spiritual qualities quite often moving them to tears or private reflection, quite unrelated to the Treaty’s political or legal relevance.”
“I decided to reproduce the Treaty from ‘the other side’ as it were, dealing only with the people and their signatures without which there would be no validity to the document whatsoever. This approach forces the viewer to become involved with the people and their very human contribution.”
Collection
Max Hailstone Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Tauranga Sheet
For the exhibition, 'Max Hailstone: Te Ara Takahaka Tapuae / Points of Reference' (9 April – 28 August 2016) these works were accompanied by the following words of Max Hailstone.
“[T]hese marks were in all probability the first marks written by many of the chiefs as well as perhaps among the earliest examples of indigenous writing from New Zealand.”
“For the Māori people the prints represent much more than simple marks, they are part of their ancestors and as such maintain their spiritual qualities quite often moving them to tears or private reflection, quite unrelated to the Treaty’s political or legal relevance.”
“I decided to reproduce the Treaty from ‘the other side’ as it were, dealing only with the people and their signatures without which there would be no validity to the document whatsoever. This approach forces the viewer to become involved with the people and their very human contribution.”
Collection
Max Hailstone Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Herald, South Island/Kapiti Sheet
For the exhibition, 'Max Hailstone: Te Ara Takahaka Tapuae / Points of Reference' (9 April – 28 August 2016) these works were accompanied by the following words of Max Hailstone.
“[T]hese marks were in all probability the first marks written by many of the chiefs as well as perhaps among the earliest examples of indigenous writing from New Zealand.”
“For the Māori people the prints represent much more than simple marks, they are part of their ancestors and as such maintain their spiritual qualities quite often moving them to tears or private reflection, quite unrelated to the Treaty’s political or legal relevance.”
“I decided to reproduce the Treaty from ‘the other side’ as it were, dealing only with the people and their signatures without which there would be no validity to the document whatsoever. This approach forces the viewer to become involved with the people and their very human contribution.”
Collection
Max Hailstone Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The East Coast Sheet
For the exhibition, 'Max Hailstone: Te Ara Takahaka Tapuae / Points of Reference' (9 April – 28 August 2016) these works were accompanied by the following words of Max Hailstone.
“[T]hese marks were in all probability the first marks written by many of the chiefs as well as perhaps among the earliest examples of indigenous writing from New Zealand.”
“For the Māori people the prints represent much more than simple marks, they are part of their ancestors and as such maintain their spiritual qualities quite often moving them to tears or private reflection, quite unrelated to the Treaty’s political or legal relevance.”
“I decided to reproduce the Treaty from ‘the other side’ as it were, dealing only with the people and their signatures without which there would be no validity to the document whatsoever. This approach forces the viewer to become involved with the people and their very human contribution.”
Notes
Māori video artists on display in Christchurch
Works by more than twenty Māori moving image artists will be on display at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū in August.
Commentary
Curating Oceania
The idea for an exhibition of Oceanic art originated from the Royal Academy itself, proposed in 2012 by its then artistic director Kathleen Soriano, an Australian. The exhibition was imagined to fit within the Academy’s occasional programme of ‘civilisation’ or ‘world art’ exhibitions, inaugurated in 1996 with the ground-breaking Africa: Art of a Continent, and followed by exhibitions such as Aztecs (2002), China (2005), Byzantium (2009) and others. These exhibitions sat among the gallery’s more usual fare of historical European, modern and contemporary art.
Commentary
Te Āhua o te Hau ki te Papaioea
The ‘Operation 8’ anti-terror raids in October of 2007 were the culmination of a police investigation that led to the raiding of homes across New Zealand. The raids were conducted after an extended period of surveillance, which was enabled through use of the 2002 Terrorism Suppression Act. In 2013 the Independent Police Conduct Authority found that police had “unnecessarily frightened and intimidated” people during the raids.
Interview
Looking at Forty Years of Māori Moving Image Practice
Māori Moving Image: An Open Archive is co-curated by Bridget Reweti and Melanie Oliver. The following text is a conversation between the two curators around co-curating, archives and Māori moving image practice.
Commentary
Bringing the Soul
As an eleven-year-old boy from Whāngarei, sent to live in Yaldhurst with my aunt in the late seventies, Christchurch was a culture shock. Arriving in New Zealand’s quintessential ‘English city’, I remember well the wide landscapes and manicured colonial built environment. It was very pretty but also very monocultural, with no physical evidence of current or former Māori occupation or cultural presence, or at least none that I could appreciate at that time.
Artist Profile
Doris Lusk: An Inventive Eye
In the strange, stunned afterlife that ticked slowly by in the first few years following Christchurch’s February 2011 earthquake, a curious note of recognition sounded through the shock and loss. As a massive programme of demolitions relentlessly hollowed out the city, many buildings were incompletely removed and lingered on for months as melancholy remains – stumps abandoned in a forlorn urban forest. Hideous, sculptural, beautiful; they bore compelling resemblance to a body of paintings created in the city more than three decades earlier.
