Exhibitions
Events
On display
Julie King Memorial Lecture: Ngarino Ellis
![](/media/cache/58/31/5831e013f81f369e2f40d013a016e24a.jpg)
Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou)
![](/media/cache/c1/84/c18479b3e1360b62320c24a31570fc20.jpg)
Friends
Sunday 29 September / 2pm
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free [Bookings Not Required]
Blinging up the body: Māori and adornment
The latest project of award winning author Ngarino Ellis is a forthcoming book Toi te Mana: A History of Indigenous Art from Aotearoa New Zealand. It is a landmark account of Māori art from the time of the tūpuna (ancestors) to the present day, written by two senior Māori art historians Ngarino Ellis and Deidre Brown and includes research by the late Jonathan Mane-Wheoki. It features moko, adornment, rock art, textiles and architecture over a long time - from before the separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku to contemporary artists in Aotearoa and around the world today.
Describing her work as a “detective trail, with the joy and thrill of discovery” Ngarino Ellis will take us on a remarkable voyage through all aspects of body adornment across centuries of our indigenous art history.
Biography
Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) is an associate professor in art history at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. Her monograph A Whakapapa of Tradition: 100 Years of Ngāti Porou Carving, 1830–1930 (Auckland University Press, 2016) won several awards including the Judith Binney Best First Book at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and Best Māori Art Book at the Ngā Kupu Ora Awards: Celebrating Māori Books and Journalism, 2017. She co-edited Te Puna: Māori Art from Te Tai Tokerau / Northland (Reed, 2007) with Deidre Brown, and Te Ata: Māori Art from the East Coast, New Zealand (Reed, 2002) with Witi Ihimaera.
Ngarino has also collaborated as a curator, including Whakawhanaungatanga: Connecting People and Taonga (Linden Museum, Stuttgart, 2022–24) with Dougal Austin, Awhina Tamarapa and Justine Treadwell, and Pūrangiaho: Seeing Clearly (Auckland Art Gallery, 2001) with Ngahiraka Mason and Kahutoi Te Kanawa. She has published on many aspects of Māori art history including moko, adornment, art crime and gender.
Lecture presented by the Friends of the Art Gallery courtesy of the Estate of the late Julie King. Art historian Julie King was Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Canterbury and an Honorary Life Member and Patron of the Friends.