Two authors of an extraordinary new book on the history of Māori art, Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis, discuss how they approached it, and why.

Māori art is one of the great art traditions of the world. That kaupapa was the starting point for a project we began 12 years ago, with our late colleague Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, now fully realised in this year’s publication of Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art.

The book represents our understanding of Māori art based on our 100 years’ combined experience teaching, researching and writing in the discipline as Māori art historians. Our definition of Māori art is non-negotiable. It is art made by anyone who is Māori. We took this position in order to investigate, in detail, a broad range of visual arts, makers’ stories and our changing practices, dating from the time of our first Polynesian ancestors to the present day. The approach yielded three recurring themes within this great diversity of Māori art: tikanga, whenua and whakapapa. 

Tikanga also influenced our strategy for addressing the cyclical nature of Māori time and the linear nature of history and the way books are read. This is evident in Toi Te Mana’s three-part structure, that organises its 19 chapters, 37 text boxes and over 500 images according to Ngā Kete e Toru, the legendary Three Baskets of Knowledge retrieved by Tāne: Te Kete Tuatea (sometimes referred to as the ‘basket of light’) containing the continuum of toi Māori from within the customary world; Te Kete Tuauri (‘the basket of the unknown’) addressing the artistic challenges and opportunities arising from new engagements with Pākehā and the European world; and Te Kete Aronui (‘the basket of pursuit’) concerning the rise of pan-tribal customary art movements, contemporary Māori arts and local and international Māori art exhibitions.

In Te Kete Tuatea, the tikanga-based art practices of our ancestors anchor Toi Te Mana: waka, whakairo rākau (woodcarving), kākahu (textiles), whare (architecture), toi whenua (rock art), and taonga o Wharawhara (body adornment, including moko). Some of these arts were represented in the Te Māori exhibition, which opened its United States tour at New York’s Museum of Modern Art 40 years ago to international critical acclaim, before its return and rapturous reception in Aotearoa New Zealand (all discussed in the book).

These practices have not stopped and, in later chapters, Toi Te Mana captures their continuance, including the considerable efforts of 20th century art leaders, such as Rangimarie Hetet (Ngāti Kinohaku), Te Puea Herangi (Tainui) and Apirana Ngata (Ngāti Porou), to ensure that they survived in challenging times.

Innovative Māori artforms arising from the social, political and spiritual changes of the 19th century are the subjects of Te Kete Tuauri. Engagements with Christian missionaries, for example, were a mixed blessing of attempted repression of Māori art by some missionaries, with occasional support, from others, for magnificent Māori-built and embellished churches, like Rangiātea in Ōtaki (completed in 1851). New materials, technologies and concepts of art, originating in Europe and added by Māori to their pre-existing artistic traditions, found expression in text woven onto kākahu and incised onto skin, red wax inserted onto hei tiki and Rātana architecture, to name a few examples.

All of these innovations occurred during the New Zealand Wars and their aftermath, when Māori strove to retain autonomy and their whenua, themes reflected throughout the art of these times. This period is also a time when many important examples of Māori art were being traded with, or taken by, Pākehā collectors and sent to museums here and overseas. These are difficult, yet important, art histories to research and write about, as are all art histories situated in conflicts and their aftermaths, and we have not shied away telling this past and connecting it to art continuing these practices and narratives today.

Art in Māori communities was strategically revitalised from the early 20th century by charismatic Māori patrons. Tāne’s third kete, Te Kete Aronui, orientates the reader towards the present, when Māori art becomes a platform on which to assert and celebrate whakapapa. Architectural and waka-building projects reunited hapū and iwi in order to assert survival and hope. Since the mid 20th century, waves of Māori painters, sculptors and, more recently, installation and digital artists have emerged from tertiary training institutions.

Māori art challenges notions of tradition with its new forms and materials, as well as audiences based in the art gallery. Generations of migration away from tūrangawaewae to cities, both in Aotearoa and overseas, reminds us that Māori artists can be global practitioners. Asserting a Māori identity has been a journey for some artists, such as Shane Cotton and Peter Robinson, whose growing cultural awareness is evident in their evolving bodies of work. For us, a Māori artist has whakapapa, no matter what their upbringing, reo level, or degree of Māori visual references in their work. 

Toi Te Mana offered a platform for revealing dimensions of Māori art not explored before, finding artwork thought to be forever lost, and celebrating makers whose work was so ahead of its time that it did not attract the attention it deserved.

The centrality of gender in art led Ellis to investigate the depiction of sexuality in carving, in order to challenge the male/female binary that dominated whakairo rākau by the end of the 19th century. Men as weavers and women as moko artists and carvers complicates the gendered landscape, reminding us of how truly experimental our tīpuna were. Māori street artists, designers, fashion designers, contemporary jewellers, architects and clay workers, often neglected in Māori art histories and exhibitions, are highlighted as important contributors to Māori art.

Eight years of looking for taonga Māori sent offshore by 19th century missionaries led Brown to rediscover eight stunning whakairo rākau in museums around the world, their existence only previously remembered in a series of letters written by Thomas Kendall in 1823. The discussion of the whakairo rākau forms only a couple of Toi Te Mana’s paragraphs, and is one of the book’s many examples of deep investigation leading to rediscovery, which is a signature practice of art historical research.

Mane-Wheoki, who was an early member of the Māori modernist art movement before he became an art historian, was adamant that Toi Te Mana should profile artists who deserved greater recognition. They included pioneering artists such as the painters Pauline Kahurangi Yearbury (Ngāpuhi; who in 1949 became the first Māori artist to graduate from a tertiary arts school) and Oriwa Tahupōtiki Haddon (Ngāti Ruanui), as well as the first professional photographer, printmaker and filmmaker, Ramai Hayward (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu). 

He aha te mea nui? We have wondered what is the greatest thing over the many years that Toi Te Mana has taken over our lives and those of our whānau. Globally Māori art is everywhere, in exhibitions in Venice and San Francisco, being made by weavers in Sydney and London. Connecting across seas enables trans-Indigenous opportunities, such as fellowships and exhibition-making.

Closer to home, Māori lead art initiatives through curatorship, collaborations and education. Tikanga, whenua and whakapapa remain central concerns in the book, as they have shaped Māori art through its many transformations. Toi Te Mana asserts our understanding of Māori art as nuanced, dynamic and challenging, with people at its heart.

Ma pango, ma whero, ka oti te mahi.
By red and by black, the work is finished.

Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown & Ngarino Ellis & Jonathan Mane-wheoki ($100, Auckland University Press) is available to purchase from Unity Books.