Elizabeth Ellis with her 1966 work at Wairau Maori Art Gallery Photo: Nimmy Santhosh
Among Elizabeth Mountain Ellis's ambitions for Māori art is MAMA - a Museum of Māori Art in South Auckland. She's already begun that journey with the founding in early 2022 of Aotearoa New Zealand's only public gallery devoted to Māori art, the Wairau Māori Art Gallery in Whāngarei, in Te Tai Tokerau in the North.
The late art historian Jonathan Mane Wheoki has referred to Te Tai Tokerau as the crucible of Māori art.
Such were the number of groundbreaking modern Māori artists to come from this region in the 1950s and 1960s: Ralph Hotere, Buck Ninn, Selwyn Muru, Cliff Whiting, Fred Graham, Para Matchitt and Pauline Yearbury among them.
Exhibition Te Ao Hurihuri at Wairau Maori Art Gallery Photo: Nimmy Santhosh
Also among them is Ellis, who features with many in Te Ao Hurihuri, an exhibition of work by this generation at Wairau Māori Art gallery in until 28 July.
Elizabeth is represented by a painting from 1966 of one of her maunga (mountains) up north. This was two years after graduating from Elam School of Fine Arts, alongside Mere Harrison Lodge.
“We started at Elam together,” Ellis remembers, “the only two Māori women there. We began in 1962 as two strangers and then discovered that we shared a Ngāti Porou great-grandmother and have stayed close friends forever.”
Photo: Arts news
Pictured are Ellis and Lodge helping hang the first exhibition of modern Māori artists in a church hall in Kirikiriroa Hamilton. A seminal moment, gathering together the artists who 58 years later, many now past, who are in Te Ao Hurihuri.
Born in Kawakawa of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Porou, Elizabeth Ellis has gone on to a significant career both as an artist and teacher but also as a leading advocate for Toi Māori nationally.
Ralph Hotere. Exhibition Te Ao Hurihuri at Wairau Maori Art Gallery Photo: Nimmy Santhosh
Chair of the Wairau Māori Art Gallery in Whāngarei and the Toi Iho Charitable trust, Ellis has also been a chair of Te Waka Toi at Creative New Zealand, chair of the Pacific Arts Council and worked for decades leading Haerewa Māori advisory board for Auckland Art Gallery, before establishing Wairau.
She now reveals to Culture 101’s Mark Amery, designs on the creation of the Māori Arts Museum of Aotearoa, an idea in its infancy but whose time she believes is coming.
Elizabeth Ellis was awarded a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2003. She spoke with Culture 101's Mark Amery just prior to attending the Pacific Arts Festival which opened in Hawaii this week.
Pauline Yearbury. Exhibition Te Ao Hurihuri at Wairau Maori Art Gallery Photo: Nimmy Santhosh
Ralph Hotere. Exhibition Te Ao Hurihuri at Wairau Maori Art Gallery Photo: Nimmy Santhosh
