B.
Sione Monu Returning Traces: our ancestors left us clues 2019-2020. Video. Courtesy of the artist
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
Te Wheke
Welcome – nau mai haere mai. Kei Te Ararau o Tangaroa / Pathways Across Oceania is an attempt to understand the Gallery’s collection from the perspective of our place in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean. Full of stories of migration, connection and belonging, this huge new exhibition reflects the connections and tensions that shape our past, present and future.
Wheke means octopus in te reo Māori. For many cultures around Te Moananui-a-Kiwa / the Pacific Ocean, this resourceful, resilient, adventurous creature is a symbol of early voyages of exploration and migration from the Polynesian homelands of Hawaiki.
Its long tentacles stretch out across the ocean to Tonga, Kiribati, Hawai’i, Rapanui (Easter Island) and Aotearoa New Zealand. In this selection of art from the collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and beyond, te wheke offers a way to understand how we are connected across time and place.
In Aotearoa, conventional art history tells the stories of art that ties us to Britain and Europe. The art in these pages looks in a different direction –from the Pacific outwards. Artists reach back to Polynesia and out into the world beyond, finding connections that are old and new.
Oceania is large and glorious. Like the octopus, it connects us along Pacific pathways with ideas of navigation, belonging and identity. Te Wheke opens up conversations about the journeys, tensions and connections that shape our past, present and future.
I ngā iwi maha puta noa i Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa ko te wheke he tipua, hei tohu i ngā hekenga i Hawaiki ki tōna paenga atu. Ko ōna kāwai ka toro atu ki Tonga, ki Kiribati, ki Hawai’i, ki Rapanui, tae rawa ki Niu Tīreni nei. He whakakotahitanga a Te Wheke i ngā taonga o tēnei whare, o waho kē atu anō hoki hei tohu i ngā hononga whakawhiti wā, whakawhiti moana, whakawhiti tangata.
Ki Niu Tīreni nei, ka ahu mai anō te nuinga o ngā kōrero toi i ngā hononga ki Piritania, ki Uropi. Ka aro kē atu ngā mahi toi ka kitea i tēnei whakaaturanga mai i ngā hononga o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa puta whakawaho. Ko Te Moana-nuia-Kiwa te ranga wairua o ngā ringa toi, koia anō hoki te whakamānu i te tangata ki te ao hou.
He nui, he whakahirahira Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. Pērā i te wheke, ka tūhonotia ai tātou mā ngā ara moana, mā ngā ara mahara, mā ngā ara tangata. Ko Te Wheke hei ātea, hei waha i ngā kōrero kei waenga i ngā iwi o mua mai, o naianei mai, o āpōpō mai.
Ka mihia ngā kaituku taonga e Te Puna o Waiwhetū mō te ngākau nui ki tēnei kaupapa, ko Te Wheke.
Related reading: Te Reo, Te Wheke
Exhibition
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
3 July 2022
Experience the Gallery’s collection from the perspective of our place in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean.
Product
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
Ken Hall, Nathan Pohio, Felicity Milburn, Lara Strongman and Peter Vangioni, with Stephanie Oberg
$19.99
Commentary
Temples for Curious Minds
I want to tell you a story. A ‘curiodyssey’ (which by the way, I thought I’d made up but is the name of an actual museum in California). So, a curiodyssey of happy places, told through the science of wellbeing.
Commentary
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
Every few years, the curatorial team at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū embarks on a major rehang of the first-floor collection area. It’s no small undertaking finding fresh ways to combine long-held, well-known works and new acquisitions, looking for combinations that will offer compelling viewing, immersive storytelling and intellectual engagement to our wide and evolving visitor base. This time, director Blair Jackson added another dimension to our task, challenging us to reimagine the physical orientation of the spaces to encourage visitors to interact with the architecture in a completely different way.
Commentary
The Seas are Rising: So Are We
In Te Ao Māori the whakataukī “He toka tū moana” pays homage to the rock that withstands the sea as a metaphor for human strength in our cultural or political beliefs, whatever may come. But while the rock is steadfast, the octopus Te Wheke is a shape-shifter, canny and malleable.
Commentary
Where in the World? Placing New Zealand in the Pacific
“It is a strange fact that New Zealand can be literally all at sea in the Pacific Ocean, and yet pay that ocean, and neighbours and relations within it, so little attention.”
— Damon Salesa, Sāmoan historian
“… this small and very British country is producing some honest and lively artists whose eyes open upon a land not at all like England, but whose minds are formed in the living tradition of Western culture.”
— Helen Hitchings, New Zealand gallerist
Commentary
Identities of Journey and Return
It was the novelty of seeing white people rendered by a Japanese artist that tickled me when I first saw Utagawa Sadahide’s woodblock prints of foreigners in Yokohama in the 1860s. There’s something slightly clumsy about the Westerners’ exaggerated noses and the forced rounding of their eyes. You can sense, in these images, the artist’s struggle to detach himself from the conventions of Japanese art and beauty; his lines waver here, unlike his assertive depictions of long, flat Japanese faces in earlier prints.
Notes
Massive wall painting marks opening of Te Wheke at Christchurch Art Gallery
A 36-metre painting by artist Kelcy Taratoa is part of a new exhibition opening at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū on Saturday.
Exhibition
Kelcy Taratoa: Te Tāhū o ngā Maunga Tūmatakahuki
A vast painting by Kelcy Taratoa about how we are bound together.
Notes
Te Wheke celebrates Ōtautahi Christchurch’s place in the Pacific
An immersive exhibition that explores art through our connections with the Pacific will be unveiled at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū on 30 May.
Notes
Hawaiki Tautau Atu, Hawaiki Tautau Mai / A Distance Draws Near
Hawaiki is the ancient homeland of Polynesian people who navigated the seas in double-hulled waka from Rarotonga, Tahiti and Ra’iātea to the islands of the Pacific Ocean, including Aotearoa New Zealand.
Notes
Ātea
In te ao Māori, the state of a space when cleared of obstruction is called ātea. This concept was brought to Aotearoa New Zealand from the islands of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa / the Pacific Ocean by Polynesian ancestors.
Notes
Kanohi Ki Te Kanohi / Face To Face
In te ao Māori, portraiture can encompass rangatiratanga (stewardship), whanaungatanga (kinship or connectedness), manaakitanga (kindness towards others) and whakapapa (ancestral genealogy). A sense of wairua (the spirit of a person) also resonates within these treasured portraits.
Notes
Ko Enei Tauira Ataahua / These Beautiful Patterns
From a present-day perspective, the appropriation of customary Māori art forms and practice by Pākehā artists can be disconcerting, a more-than-awkward crossing of cultural lines.
Notes
I Tawhiti Ra Ano / From Distant Shores
The islands of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa / the Pacific were settled by remarkable ocean voyagers over many thousands of years. Aotearoa New Zealand was peopled through major waves of migration from the 1200s and later the mid-1800s. The seas of Oceania are like vast pathways; ever-present reminders of distant shores.
Notes
Paerangi / The Fold in the Sky
The connection between land and sky is important in te ao Māori. In Māori creation, Papatūānuku (the earth mother) was separated from Ranginui (the sky father) by their children, creating Te Ao Mārama, the world of light.
Notes
He Ara / Pathways
Aotearoa New Zealand is part of a submerged Pacific continent, which broke away from the Gondwana supercontinent millions of years ago to create two major islands – Te Ika a Māui / the North Island and Te Waipounamu / the South Island.
Notes
Puta Noa I Te Ao / In the World
Artists from Aotearoa New Zealand are often well-travelled. Feeling the distance of Aotearoa from the world’s centres of art, they have often been drawn overseas to study and work, contributing to the art history of their adopted countries as well as this one.
Notes
He Toka Tū Moana
The Māori whakataukī or proverb “He toka tū moana” uses the image of a rock that stands firmly in the ocean to describe someone steadfast and strong in their culture or beliefs, who defies all opposition.
Director's Foreword
Director’s Foreword
Welcome to the autumn issue of Bulletin. Here at the Gallery, we’re about to move into a major changeover as we rehang our upstairs collection galleries. When they reopen again on 10 April, the whole space will have been given over to a major new exhibition.
