To say the artist duo Kemi Whitwell and Niko Leyden have an obsession with backcountry huts is no overstatement.
It’s been the focus of their art and design for more than 12 years. The Waikato-based couple, who dub themselves Kemi & Niko, employ the skills of fine craft modelling, sustainable building and social connection to create miniatures of classic, and public programmes for people to engage with them.
The hut projects over the years have ranged from small (just room for one or two to shelter from the rain on short walks) to the tiny (replicas for the table or shelf).
Kemi Whitwell and Niko Leyden Photo: Kemi and Niko
Whitwell and Leyden celebrate the distinctive and DIY aspects of our backcountry architecture - work that was often historically undertaken by remarkable individuals, lugging materials they had to hand into remote sites. The pair employ a number eight wire ingenuity in response, recycling materials and promoting sustainability through both art and lifestyle.
Kemi & Niko have thus far done replicas of 50 of the 900 or so huts dotted around our country, fascinated by the rich collective stories they tell. The multiple miniatures they create - announcing a different hut every month - get sold, they say, as fast as they can make them. This is a country that loves its tramping and its hut heritage. Whitwell says it was the popular book Shelter From the Storm: The Story of New Zealand’s Backcountry Huts by Geoff Spearpoint, Rob Brown and Shaun Barnett (who sadly died recently), which got them thinking initially about celebrating this heritage in sculpture. That book has a new edition coming out in December.
This month Kemi & Niko are celebrating the centenary of the Field Hut in the Tararua ranges, a popular if steep climb in from Ōtaki at the start of the Southern Crossing. Tararua Tramping Club celebrations are about to take place.
'Bigature' of Field Hut in the Tararua Ranges Photo: Kemi and Niko
As well as selling miniatures of the hut they have also created what they call a ‘bigature’. The craft in this big table version by Whitwell is exquisite. As well as use of their most common material - corrugated tin from recycled tin cans - this replica revels in its attention to period detail: from a wee door latch to a tap.
When they make a hut, Kemi and Niko decide on an era to base it on. As trampers will know huts are, over the years, constantly changing and being improved. In the case of Field Hut it’s circa 1950, showing a few decades of wear and tear from the Tararua elements. The verandah roof shows signs it’s had dumps of snow on it, and there’s even a window that’s been temporarily fixed with a sheet of iron.
This Field bigature will be on display at Aratoi Museum in Masterton until mid-December.
'Bigature' of Te Waiotukapiti Hut Photo: Kemi and Niko
Meanwhile, a bigature of Te Waiotukapiti Hut is on display at tramping store Coffee Outdoors in Pōneke Wellington until mid-December.
Te Waiotukapiti was built in Te Urerewa in 1956 from timber slabs. It’s been reimagined as it was in the 1970s in “full high definition steel and timber”.
Kemi at Old Cedar Flat Hut with mini, 2024 Photo: Kemi and Niko
Te Waiotukapiti is a handy prop for current discussion around what of our backcountry heritage should be maintained, versus what should be demolished or replaced by newer models.
It’s one of 19 huts that has been tagged for demolition and replacement in Te Urewera. 29 have already been dismantled and burnt, before a late 2023 High Court ruling found DOC director-general, Tūhoe representatives Te Uru Taumatua and Te Urewera Board had acted contrary to Te Urewera Act in allowing the huts to be demolished.
Kemi and Niko Leyden have also had a dedication to large, community-engaged, public art projects. It’s something that comes through in their current more remote living situation, in the development of a large online community - with a particularly delightful and active Instagram account.
A recent video post sees them revisiting a series of imaginative huts for native creatures they built three years ago at Waikanae’s Ngā Manu Nature reserve - Dwellbeings.
In 1999 Brett McKenzie, as a curator with Aotearoa New Zealand International Festival of the Arts selected the couple to develop a series of mini huts families could walk to in different reserves in the Kāpiti region.
Ranging from a stylish bespoke modernist cubby at Whareroa Farm near Raumati, to a birds nest like bivvy in Kaitawa Reserve, Paraparaumu.
Urban Hut Club provides a map of small treasure hunt-like walks, introducing families to lesser known corners of the green public spaces around them, with shelters (complete with commissioned stories from local writers) at their end. No hut is alike. With each, the pair stretch concepts of what a hut could look like and be. All but the Kaitawa hut still exist five years later, cared for by their communities - there for you to find.
The festival project even included a Roaming Hut on wheels, which turned up all over Te Whānganui-a-Tara, providing a stage and space for the public at festival events.
The Urban Hut Club was an extension of an ambitious Miniature Hikes series which ran from 2014 to 2016 funded by Wellington City Council.
Aoraki Biv, as it was, in Rolleston Heights Photo: supplied
The first hut, Aoraki Biv in Rolleston Heights was near where the pair then lived. It’s long gone, but as they demonstrated this week you can still bush bash in five minutes from a road to see its base and get fantastic views of the city.
These are artists dedicated to making us better appreciate and take care of our environment and each other.
Robin Hut as part of Miniature Hikes in 2014 at Owhiro Bay Photo: Brendon Doran
