20 December 2011

Walking with Taniwha

For many people the idea of seeing a taniwha alive today is as unlikely as catching a glimpse of the Loch Ness Monster. Yet, points out Reuben Friend, Māori and Pacific Art Curator at City Gallery, taniwha occurrences do happen in Aotearoa. These encounters have become the impetus for Palmerston North based artist Israel Tangaroa Birch’s major new installation entitled Ara-i-te-uru currently on show at City Gallery Wellington.

The exhibition in the Deane Gallery aims to create a broader context to explain taniwha and explores the historical back stories which have made these creatures so vital to Māori communities today.

To help see taniwha through Māori eyes, Birch has constructed a large floor-based, red-gold coloured steel sculpture and placed a gigantic mirror in the space, referring to the reflection as the taniwha. “Like reflections, taniwha may not be held but they can be perceived and represent something very real, and usually something standing right in front of our noses,” Friend explains.

Birch’s installation plays in the space between mythology and actuality, where legend meets contemporary reality. Referencing some of the collaborations between artists Ralph Hotere and Bill Culbert, such as Aramoana–Pathway to the Sea (1991) and Blackwater (1999), Birch uses light and shadow to explore relationships between things in te ao mārama (the physical world of light) and their metaphysical counterparts in te pō (the spiritual world of darkness).

The exhibition shares the same name as Ara-i-te-uru (also known as Āraiteuru) Birch’s ancestral taniwha who lives in the Hokianga Harbour. She came to Aotearoa New Zealand several hundred years ago from Hawaiki as a guide and guardian for the early ancestors of the Northland tribes of Ngāpuhi. She is said to have personally caused numerous shipwrecks along the headlands and her children were said to have carved the valleys and rivers around the harbour.

Friend cites recent examples where taniwha have reared their mystical head. “In 2002 a Tainui iwi, Ngāti Naho, expressed concerns about Transit New Zealand’s new layout for State Highway 1 which encroached on the lair of their one eye taniwha Karu Tahi. Fourteen months after heeding the taniwha warnings and rerouting the Highway away from the lair, the Waikato River flooded, swamping what was the proposed highway layout. In the same year, Northland Iwi unsuccessfully protested against Ngāwhā Prison being built on an old swampland kainga (home) of a taniwha named Takauere near Kaikohe. “In 2007, after ignoring the taniwha warnings, the Government admitted the Prison was sinking into the ground,” says Friend. “So as you can see they are a very tangible and potent presence for Māori.”

Artist Biography

Israel Tangaroa Birch (b. 1976) is of Ngāpuhi (Ngai Tawake) and Ngāti Kahungunu (Te Iwi o Rakaipaaka) descent and holds a degree in Visual Arts from the Eastern Institute of Technology, Napier. In 2010 Birch completed his Masters in Māori Visual Arts through Te Pūtahi-ā-Toi School of Māori Visual Arts, Massey University, Palmerston North where he currently lectures on Māori Visual Culture. He regularly exhibits nationally and abroad and has won several awards including the Ngā Karahipi ā Te-Waka Toi Creative New Zealand Excellence in Māori Arts Award and was a finalist in the Norsewear Art Award in 2004, 2005 and was awarded the supreme prize in 2006. Birch is represented by Page Blackie Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand and Martin Browne Gallery, New South Wales, Australia.

ENDS