Kōanga focuses on modes of storytelling in contemporary Māori art practice, exploring the use of pattern, symbols and motifs alongside more direct forms of visual narrative. The works in Kōanga convey a philosophical worldview that is both traditional and innovative.

Drawing on motifs of weaving and histories told through pattern, Lonnie Hutchinson (Kāi Tahu, Sāmoa) translates these elements through modern materials. Paper, steel and aluminium are cut and folded, assemblages that speak affectingly of cultural complexity and combine personal and political agendas.

Lisa Reihana (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine and Ngāi Tu) invites consideration and reinterpretation of Māori creation stories. In creating mythic, in-between spaces where questioning and reimagining can happen, she emphasises the importance of genealogical histories and how these narratives of metamorphosis and shifting power dynamics have continuing relevance.

Inverting the representation of creation and myth as lightless space, in her Pelt series, Reihana conceives an uncanny white world that emerges out of mist with glittery earth and a pixilated landscape. Here she conjures strange and beautiful hybrid women, with plumage suggesting a connection to the bird woman Kurangaituku and to Harpies of Greek and Roman mythology; in both instances the creatures symbolise transgressive, female power.

Distilling Māori visual culture down to fundamental elements, Ralph Hotere’s (Te Aupōuri iwi) practice developed a Māori language of abstraction. Hotere returned repeatedly to themes of spiritualism, loss and tension between nature and the impact of humans. In Les Saintes Maries de la Mer (1986) Hotere draws on narratives and symbols explored during his time in France, redeploying them to commemorate the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior that had recently happened in 1985. The partially hidden words “Black Rainbow” are scrawled below a segmented heart, a cross planted as if on a landscape and an arcing black rainbow that runs edge to edge placed protectively above.

Aramoana Landscape I (1980) uses another cross, this time turned on its side, and the words of poet Cilla McQueen; these elements are stripped down to their essence, foregrounding repetition and symbolic connotation.

Articulating signifiers of identity in an alternative narrative, Chris Heaphy (Ngāi Tahu) emphasises the contingent and unfixed nature of identity - open for interpretation and reiteration by the viewer. Playing with scale and painterly textures, his silhouettes utilise symbols and their suggestive relationships over didactic explanation.

Translating Māori patterns through the medium of glass, Te Rongo Kirkwood (Te Wai-o-Hua, Te Kawerau, Ngāi Tai ki Tamaki) emulates and extends traditional objects and materials. The permanence of glass lends a beautiful gravity to her gourds and cloaks.

Creating a new methodology and innovative approach is a path also shared by Israel Birch (Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Tawake, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Rakaipaaka). Surfaces of stainless steel are carved and overlayed with transparent pigments and lacquer, creating forms that shift according to light, movement and the viewer’s perspective.

“Our ancestors rendered patterns down to their most clear, concise and potent expression for delivering an idea. Kōwhaiwhai speaks to us and reminds us to persevere, innovate, adapt, and grow, reflecting a spirit of survival.”¹

Examining cultural histories of New Zealand, Shane Cotton (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine, Te Uri Taniwha) questions how patterns and objects embody knowledge.

Chris Bailey’s (Ngāti Hako, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Porou) recent bronze sculptures create new directions for carving practice, translating mark making from wood to bronze; paired back contemporary forms flow across simplified surfaces. New ceramics from acclaimed ceramic artist Baye Riddell (Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-a-Ruataupare) explore similar territory using the materiality of clay.

The works in Kōanga innovate and carry knowledge through time to link generations.

1. Israel Birch, Artist Statement, 23 July 2023.