Exhibitions
Events
On display
The Pātaka Cabinet
John Henry Menzies Stanford Family Pātaka Cabinet (c.1895). Wood, pāua shell. Collections of Akaroa Museum (with assistance from the Friends of Akaroa Museum) and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, jointly purchased 2019
Talk
Past event
Meet in the exhibition
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED
Colonial furniture expert and furniture restorer William Cottrell, and Dan Smith, curator at Akaroa Museum, will discuss the conservation and restoration of the intricately-carved William Henry Menzies Stanford family pātaka cabinet (c.1985), a recent Gallery acquisition and star of the Te Wheke exhibition.
This master-work of Arts and Crafts furniture making in colonial New Zealand is a fascinating artefact – paua-inlaid and richly carved in patterning based on kowhaiwhai and echoing the pātaka as architectural form, it is a curious index of Pākeha appropriation.
As Smith wrote, “Principally active from the early 1880s to c.1910, John Henry Menzies (1839–1919) was a carver in wood and stone, and an architectural designer. About eighty pieces of his furniture are extant; Rehutai, one of the three houses he designed and decorated also survives, as does his church, St Luke’s. He also produced the pattern studies for Maori Patterns Painted and Carved (1910, 1975).”
Related reading: Te Wheke
Exhibition
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
3 July 2022
Experience the Gallery’s collection from the perspective of our place in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean.
Collection
George French Angas Whatas or Patukas (Storehouses for Food)
George French Angas was an English traveller, artist, natural historian and ethnographer. In 1844, he spent four months exploring Te Ika-a-Māui (the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand), also visiting Tōtara-nui (Queen Charlotte Sound) at the top of Te Waipounamu (the South Island). Although Angus represented Māori in a sentimental light, he believed in British superiority over indigenous cultures, which places his work within the canon of colonial representation of New Zealand. Pātaka (storehouses) and whata (elevated platforms) were predominantly used for storing food, seeds, tools and other valuables.
I [top left] This smaller pātaka is for housing seeds; a potato store sits behind. The location is a kāika (village) led by rangatira (chief) Te Pahe, in the Ahu Ahu area near New Plymouth. II [top right] The adornment of a structure within Māori custom reflects the status of the individual it was made for. This pātaka painted with red ochre and adorned with carving and feathers belonged to a rangatira from Te Rapa kāika on the shores of Lake Taupō. The mana of this rangatira was such that his food was tapu and needed to be stored separately. III [bottom, centre] The main pātaka in the composition belonged to Hepi Te Heuheu, the seventh paramount rangatira of Ngāti Tūwharetoa. IV [bottom, right] A pātaka of Te Rangihaeata, a rangatira of Ngāti Toa and nephew of Te Rauparaha. V [bottom, left] A woman beats flax with a stone pestle, an early part of the process of preparing flax for weaving. Note the palisade behind her. VI [centre, right] Kākā were popular domestic pets. They could be trained to talk (although not as well as the tūī) and were also used to attract other birds for easy hunting.
(Our Collection: 19th and 20th Century New Zealand Art, 2018)
Collection
W. G. Baker Māori Pā, Whanganui River
William Baker was a second generation New Zealander, born and raised in Wellington, who began his working life as an upholsterer. Most likely a self-taught artist, he exhibited first with the Fine Art Association in 1883 and went on to exhibit at many of the significant institutions of the time. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Baker had become a self-supporting professional artist, touring New Zealand for his subject matter. In this work we see various whare (houses) with a larger whare wānanga (meeting house) and raised pātaka (storehouse), which shows the distinctive ochre pigment frequently used in the adornment of Māori architecture. (March 2018)
Collection
Charles Decimus Barraud Lake Horowhenua
Charles Barraud visited the Maori pa at Lake Horowhenua, a freshwater coastal lake near present-day Levin, in 1864. A London-born pharmacist, Barraud arrived in New Zealand with his family in 1849 and established a chemist shop in Lambton Quay, Wellington. As his business prospered, he travelled throughout New Zealand to sketch and paint.
Barraud’s watercolour record of the Muaupoko iwi settlement at the edge of the lake includes a prominently positioned pataka (storehouse), painted with kura (natural red earth pigment). Lake Horowhenua was once a treasured source of food (mainly eels, whitebait, flounder and shellfish) for its Maori owners.
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.
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
Massive wall painting marks opening of Te Wheke at Christchurch Art Gallery
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.
Exhibition
Kelcy Taratoa: Te Tāhū o ngā Maunga Tūmatakahuki
A vast painting by Kelcy Taratoa about how we are bound together.
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.