Exhibitions
Events
On display
Whale Rider
Film
Past event
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free
Share in this wonderful film, and its inspiring story of hope and courage.
Based on a Witi Ihimaera story, Whale Rider tells the story of Paikea, a young girl growing up on the East Coast in the care of her grandmother. Her ambition is to be the leader of her tribe, but is told this is only a role for a male descendant of Paikea, the Whale Rider, he who rode on top of a whale (Tohora) from Hawaiki. The whales, the ancient ones, have different ideas, and hear her call. (Director: Niki Caro, 2002, 105 mins, PG)
This is an opportunity to connect the figure of Paikea with Kelcy Taratoa’s amazing wall work Whakatakina te Waiwhetū in the Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania exhibition.
Related reading: Film, Māori
Exhibition
Kelcy Taratoa: Te Tāhū o ngā Maunga Tūmatakahuki
Ongoing
A vast painting by Kelcy Taratoa about how we are bound together.
Exhibition
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
30 May 2020 – 3 July 2022
Experience the Gallery’s collection from the perspective of our place in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean.
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.
