Te Koha

‘Ngāti Kura’

$3500

Prior to Māori arrival, the Patupaiarehe inhabited Aotearoa– the fairies, sprites, pixies, of the forest with fair skin and red hair. Often malign or beneficent, their villages invisible to human eyes, but sometimes our tūpuna (ancestors) would seek them out in the forests. During the night you hear them, they converse and call out, paddle in their canoes, and play their flutes.

Ngāti Kura, Ngāti Korakorako, and Ngāti Turehu descend from the Patupaiarehe. As a descendant of Ngāti Kura, I wanted to begin this story with my tūpuna. One holds the legendary toki (adze) ‘Te Awhio Rangi’ The Encircler of Heaven– once wielded by Tāne Mahuta– atua of the Great Forests– which he used to separate his parents– Ranginui the sky father and Papatūānuku the earth mother. At the foot of our awa (river), Kōpua Kawau, one tūpuna presents the toki to the other as a gift, a challenge. In doing so, the water opens up where the taonga (treasures) of our tūpuna would pass into this world.

‘Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue’

$3200

Samuel Marsden led the evangelical mission in the colonisation of Australia and Aotearoa. Born in Bagley amongst yeoman farmers. Baptised as a protege of the Elland Society– some north country clerics who recruited and trained poor men for the evangelical wing of the Established Church. When he quit England, his mission was to preach the gospel and convert the poor and wretched souls of the South Seas.

Idle hands make the devils work, he said. The seamen and their masters found his busy piety unbearable. So impressed he was by Māori industriousness that he developed the strategy of civilisation before conversion. When Ngāpuhi chiefs began travelling to and from Australia and Aotearoa, he intentionally assimilated them into European agriculture, and from there, sowed the demand for goods and gifts.

The Greek philosopher Plato once wonderfully invoked the sad condition of humanity where humans live trapped in their opinions, which are only the distorted and unconnected shadows of the full and clear reality they might dream of knowing, but never will. These shadows appear as the chiefs who trusted Marsden. However, the idea of a divided world flooded the minds of missionaries– and this binary division was the Achilles heel which kept Marsden trapped in his own world– one he often referred to as being ‘pregnant with evil’.

‘New Zealand Street’

$4800

I found a Sydney newspaper article from two centuries back which described a policeman being called to a house because some Maoris had left a corpse outside. In Te Ao Māori, The Māori World, death is laden with tapu– its sacred, set apart, profane (it’s where the English taboo derives from). As such, what is tapu must be separated from what is noa (without tapu). To bring tapu into the home has calamitous consequences on everything inside.

This painting is a collision of death customs. The land reflects how culture changes with geography. The corpse is elevated on a platform, suspended in a liminal state between life and death. Our tūpuna believe that death isn’t an immediate detachment from the world– and so they watch, concerned and assured, for the safe departure. Behind the house, the agricultural project pushes the land back, reinforcing the analytical grids which Imperial thinkers used to order people and places– in maps, blocks of land, countries, borders, grids, and measurement. Death became not something we must do, but must choose– between heaven and hell – between grace and eternal torment.

New Zealand Street was paved in Parramatta before New Zealand had any streets at all– a testament to the length of Māori settlement in Australia.

‘Ō Matenga’

$4600

As soon as whaling ships entered the Bay of Islands, the young rangatira Ruatara enlisted as a sailor on European vessels. The first was a sealer which dropped its gang off on Bounty Island near Fiji where they nearly died of thirst and hunger– only to be rescued months later. From there it was Australia, then London. Ruatara was forced to stay on board and work without pay. He was beaten and abused by the captain. When he fell ill and couldn’t work he was transferred, naked and coughing up blood, to the Ann, a convict ship bound for New South Wales. It just so happened that the missionary Samuel Marsden, his family, and two artisan missionaries were also on the Ann for their return journey. They fed and clothed Ruatara and nursed him back to health. As the waves crashed against Ann, the soothing words of the Gospel brought him home.

Ruatara’s story was providential– being on the brink of death multiple times, and returning back to life from chance encounters. Marsden and Ruatara’s hau (breath) became entangled. They lived together at Marsden’s farm in Parramatta. He learned to cultivate wheat, he learned some English, and a good deal about European ways. But Māori had learned the cost that mingling their hau with Europeans could be fatal. Their Gods brought epidemic diseases with them. Ruatara’s malady testified to the power of the European gods and their emissaries, raising doubts about dealing with the afflictions.

Ō Matenga shows Ruatara laying on his deathbed in a cosmological battle with the missionaries on one side, and a tohunga with an ancestor; imbued in a poutokomanawa, on the other. Hauhauaitu (harm to the hau) broke down reciprocal relations. His illness, just weeks after bringing the first missionaries to Aotearoa, was a sign of existential danger. His hau had mingled with the hau of the Europeans, and with them, disease. But Ruatara rolled the dice one last time– his soul wouldn’t be saved. He gave away his belongings– such as the gifts the missionaries gave him– his whānau wept, they interpreted these gifts of food and drink as Ō matenga, food for the death journey.

‘Economy of Salvation’

$2600

One of the first ever Māori to reach England was Moehanga. In 1805, the surgeon John Savage stopped in the Bay of Islands and brought the eager Moehanga along with him’. Savage took him to London where he was presented to King George III. When they parted, Moehanga took his hand and wept, Savage reminded him of his riches and the consequences of them upon his return. The power to entertain and recite the wonders and knowledge he had acquired. This assured him, but he left shedding tears

Back home, Moehanga’s tools were quickly dispersed and all that he was left with was his stories– so unbelievable to his people he was deemed pōrangi (insane). This painting is the dream, the memory, the nightmare that gripped Moehanga’s mind. It’s dark and cold in the great wen; the festering boil; the sink of vice. There’s brick and stone, tall spires, and black clouds in the air. Pale faces gawk and stare–it’s gnawing doubt.

‘Te Pahi Bound’

$4200

The chief of Te Hikutu, Te Pahi, oversaw incoming and outgoing ships of traders, sealers, and whalers from as far as America, Australia, and Europe. Te Pahi deliberately gave them wood and water at a cheap rate. Then they felled trees for spars without permission and took potatoes without payment. Despite Te Pahi’s desire for peace, the theft of community property, and beatings of local people, became abhorred by Ngāpuhi.

In 1805, Te Pahi sailed to the Australian colonies with his four sons. He became victim to violence and prejudice– such as when the captain kidnapped his eight year old boy as payment for their passage. The commandant of Norfolk Island, John Piper, quickly realised the present and future consequences of offending the most important Māori chief engaged in trans-Tasman trade, and ameliorated the situation by rescuing his son and offering hospitality.

Te Pahi longed to visit the colonies. He wanted mana– a strategy that would give him access to goods and connections that would improve his community standing. He observed customs, technology, law, trade, and agriculture. He lamented on the poverty– such as the treatment of a convict who was sentenced to the gallows for stealing a piece of pork. He pleaded to the governor for the convicts release, that killing a man over pork was a sanguine punishment. He remarked on the flour mill which revealed an image of communally owned resources. Te Pahi returned home with a gift from the governor– a prefabricated house– the first ever European house to be built in New Zealand– at the top of his island pā at Wairoa Bay. Te Pahi’s diplomacy was a political effort with an exact resemblance to the clauses that would be outlined in the Treaty of Waitangi– the obligation to protect Māori at home and abroad as Crown subjects.

Three years later, to the south in Whangaroa, the cruel Captain Thompson of the Boyd, degraded and abused Te Ara, son of the chief Te Puhi. Te Ara was refused provisions, insulted, and so severely flogged the lacerations were still raw when he hit the beach. But he persuaded Thompson to come ashore to inspect logs which Te Puhi pretended to sell. When the sailors were out of sight, they were clubbed to the ground, cooked, and eaten. At nightfall, they rowed out to the Boyd, deceived their way on board, and butchered everyone but a woman and three children. One warrior fired a musket above the open barrel of gunpowder, exploding it– gutting the ship. The colonists needed a ringleader, a scapegoat. Some rival chiefs sought to undermine Te Pahi by naming him as the perpetrator of the Boyd massacre. An armed assault party of five whaling ships and a sealer attacked Te Pahi's home, killing some 60 of his people, destroying the pā, where Te Pahi died behind his bricks.

From the European antagonism, I appropriated the image from the Western tradition– an oil painting called ‘Prometheus Bound’ by the Flemish Baroque artist, Peter Paul Rubens from 1611. As it goes, Prometheus infuriated Zeus from becoming the champion of mortals by giving them fire and the arts. His punishment for stealing fire was to be chained to a rock for eternity, suffering the torment of having an eagle devour his perpetually regenerating liver every single day. In many ways, Te Pahi’s story resembles Prometheus’ – both represent the human striving for technology and science– namely in its capacity towards achieving collective material wellbeing. But the mana Te Pahi desired became his end.

‘Pōrangi’

$450

A depiction of Moehanga, whose journey can be read in ‘Economy of Salvation’

‘A dog without teeth’

SOLD

A British soldier wears the hat of a French soldier.

’Te Ika a Ranginui’

$4000

This painting depicts the battle Te Ika a Ranganui, led by the Great Warrior Chief, Hongi Hika. Like other chiefs, Hongi voyaged to New South Wales to come face to face with European authorities. But he saw past the governors, missionaries, captains, and officers– he wanted to speak to their master.

Hongi suffered major psychological trauma when he lost his elder brothers, Houwawe and Hau Moka, his sister Waitapu, and his uncle Te Maoi in a major battle against Ngāti Whatua. When his last brother, Kaingaroa, passed away a decade later, the seed of revenge was planted– Hongi was left to avenge his whānau’s mana and lead Ngāpuhi. His nephew Ruatara had introduced him to Marsden, but he never converted, he said christianity is ‘a religion fit only for slaves’. The colonies were rife with the Empire’s pawns. So he played the game as a means to acquire the very thing that would assure his revenge: muskets.

He took his companion Waikato to England with the missionary Thomas Kendall. But he wanted to meet the King. When he did, he wouldn’t bow to him. His desire was a friendship, a relationship of equals. He orite ki te orite, he mana ki mana, He rangatira ki te rangatira, he ariki ki te ariki. Like, power with power, chief to chief. Supreme authority to supreme authority. “How do you do Mr King Hongi?”, he replied. They saw the armoury, toured London, exchanged presents, and sat in the House of Lords. They attended soirees, events, and fairs with aristocrats and nobles. He learned about firearms and Napoleon’s strategies at Waterloo. But most importantly, he met the wealthy French law student, Baron Charles de Thierry. Hongi wanted muskets and de Thierry desired land, status, and title. They brokered a deal: 400 muskets, powder and shot, for forty-thousand acres of land. Hongi got his arms but De Thierry landed in a debtors' prison.

When Hongi passed back through Parramatta, Te Hīnaki asked him ‘mo he ingioi pū?’ for who is that gun? Mou aku pū, that gun is for you. When he returned home the seed sprouted. His warriors cut through the ocean, they carried their canoes over land, and the sound of the musket triggered Te Ika a Ranganui. Battles which lasted weeks that resulted in a stalemate or minimal losses now transformed into sanguineous conflicts where villages were overpowered in a day or two, and the wholesale loss of lives. This is where the name of this battle took its name– the dead lay in the field like a great array of laid out fish.

‘The World, The Flesh, and The Devil’

$3400

A depiction of a rangatira observing two souls entwined in eternal combat while a cardinal caresses a young rangatira . A foreboding scene of the inter-tribal conflict that would ensue— and Christianity’s wedge to separate the savage from the saved.

‘Te Reinga’

SOLD

The pōhutakawa tree at Cape Reinga where the spirits of the dead leap from.

‘King Matara & Ariki George’

SOLD

Matara, Te Pahi’s son, was sent to England in 1807 where he met King George III.

‘Ahi Kā’

$3200

When Tāne (men) are away in the pursuit of mana, mana wāhine (the power of women) tend the flame, keeping the pits alive, and the bellies full.