Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis. Background artwork: Māramatanga by Lisa Reihana. Photo: Chris Loufte
A 600-page new book that took 12 years to create is set to reframe the history of Māori art.
Toi Te Mana (Auckland University Press) brings together work from Māori artists and museums from around the globe, ranging from Polynesia voyaging waka to contemporary Māori art, from body adornment and carving to street art and moving image.
Brett Graham, Maungārongo ki te Whenua Maungārongo ki te Tangata, 2020. The work appeared at the 2024 Venice Biennale Photo: Copyright: the artist's estate
Academic Peter Brunt observes that Toi Te Mana “challenges us to reconceive the entire narrative of art and modernity from the perspective of indigenous cultures worldwide”. It addresses what another historian Roger Blackley once called, in relation to the treatment of Māori art, “an unofficial apartheid”.
Toi Te Mana is a whopper of a book, but it’s also beautiful and very readable.
Papahou. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, E 1908.94 Photo: University of Cambridge
Rangi Kipa and Zach Challies, Tiki Aahua, 2023, UV-cured polymer resin, mother of pearl Photo: Sam Hartnett
It’s packed with colour images and lively accessible breakout texts on different topics from its writers: art historians and curators Deidre Brown, Ngarino Ellis and the late Jonathan Mane-Wheoki.
The book has been designed by Ngāi Tahu artist Neil Pardington and features a distinctive Rangi Kipa (Te Ati Awa) hei tiki on the front cover.
A key influence on Brown and Ellis, Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī) was there with vision at the beginning of the book’s writing, contributing some chapters and strengthening resolve to connect many strands of Toi Māori that had sometimes become disconnected from each other.
In many cases the research is only just starting, with Toi Te Mana representing an important beginning to a new Aotearoa art history.
Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) is associate professor of art history at Waipapa Taumatua Rau University of Auckland.
She told RNZ's Culture 101 while Matariki Williams teaches a summer paper at Victoria University of Wellington, she remained the only Māori teaching art history full-time in a New Zealand university.
Ellis began studying art history and law, before working as a barrister, and later enrolling in a Master's in art history.
"And then Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku shoulder tapped me to see if I'd be interested in doing tutoring for her," she said.
"I was in a bit of a bind, because I thought, how can I help my people if I am looking at art?
"She managed to convince me that it would be worthwhile."
Artists Cliff Whiting (left) and Paratene Matchitt in discussion during the installation of Contemporary Maori Painting and Sculpture (1966), St Paul’s Methodist Centre, Hamilton Photo: Archives New Zealand, AAQT 6539 A8194
Ellis then did a PhD in Māori studies.
She said there were so many different starts to Māori art history.
"One of them is in te kore - before the nothingness, before the separation, before the night. Another one is in Southeast Asia.
"So there are a number of different beginnings that are parallel and related and important to recognise in a number of different ways. And that's what we do in the book."
Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) - a professor of architecture at the same university, and in 2019, became the first indigenous woman in the world to head a School of Architecture - told Culture 101 there is a huge amount of material to cover in a comprehensive history of Māori art.
"We actually spent more than a year thinking about how it would be structured," she said.
"We reached back into tikanga Māori - Māori customs - and came up with the idea of ngā kete mātauranga, the idea of the three baskets of knowledge. And that created a really helpful structure for us, because apart from being able to contextualise different aspects of the material, we were also dealing with, because this is an art history, which tends to be linear, the cyclical nature of Māori time."
The first, te kete-tuatea - the basket of light, which Brown said "might be termed customary Māori art."
"Thinking about this as customs, practices, makers who have their foundation in Hawai'i, which is a continuing present. And so while we talk about the ancestral origins of these arts, and they can be everything from waka construction to textiles, to whakairo rākau, wood carving, rock art, body adornment, that we are actually reflecting this in who is practising now."
The second, te kete-tuauri - the basket of darkness or the unknown, is "what happened when new materials, new ideas, new concepts, and perhaps new challenges for Māori arrived via European culture."
"For example, taonga Māori in museums, the impact of Christianity on Māori art, new ideas, new technology, the arts of survival, so-called morahu arts and architecture.
"But also we wanted to ensure that our readers understood that there were customs of art that continued and traditions of art that continued. So we have a chapter on the art of utu, so forms of exchange, tuku, and also koha, and the role that art played within maintaining cultural practices."
And the third, te kete-aronui - the basket of pursuit, is "what might be termed a contemporary phase".
"We didn't want to say that contemporary starts with modernism, which is often the Western gateway into understanding Western art.
"So instead we looked at, well, what would be considered a shift into this other sort of space.
"Our starting chapter looks at the role of people like Te Puea Hērangi, Sir Āpirana Ngata, Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana, and how they saw art and architecture as a way of, we've termed it a way of social reform, but really a way of self-determination within the culture, establishing the modern foundations. And of course, a lot of this is very current at this moment in this year and in these past few weeks about self-determination and toitu te Tiriti."
MP Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan (second from left) was a leader in contemporary Māori fashion. Here outside Parliament in 1975, receiving Whina Cooper’s hīkoi. Photo: John Miller
