Crossing Currents: Episode 7 (2024)

RJIt's interesting. In 1840 Bishop William Williams arrived in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa, which is Gisborne, and started the Anglican mission there. Te Kooti was an adolescent at that time, and he attended the missionary schools that were set up by Williams. In 1865, what happened was the followers of the Pai Mārire [religion] from Taranaki had gone further down the East Coast, into the area that I'm from, and caused problems [there] in terms of their message. Because, where I'm from, the religion was Anglican, and there was a very early development of the religion in that area as a consequence of one of the Ngāti Porou slaves returning from North Auckland and spreading the Christian message. So, by the time the missionaries got there, most of the hapū (subtribes) and iwi (extended kinship group, tribe) in the Tairāwhiti [region], were already baptised and following Christianity. There was a strong church missionary society focus within that area, and that increased with the presence of the missionaries in Gisborne. By 1865, the Pai Mārire followers from Taranaki started to move towards Gisborne and then ended up in Gisborne. That started an exchange between the colonial forces and the Pai Mārire, and, of course, their appearance in Gisborne led to some early conversions to the Pai Mārire religion. There was all this tension going on in terms of not only religious but past inter-tribal settlements, because there was a problem associated with the leaders from the Tairāwhiti area, and those mainly in Rongowhakaata (iwi affiliated with the Gisborne region). There's always been this kind of tension between those tribalgroups.

Te Kooti was actually part of the Tūranganui contingent assisting the colonial troops to rebel against the Pai Mārire presence in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa, and he ended up being accused of helping the Pai Mārire contingent and getting arrested, and essentially imprisoned without trial, and ended up in the Chatham Islands in the post-1863 period. That's where he had his first vision, you know, as you do. So, he got visited by the Almighty, and he was imprisoned with Pai Mārire prisoners, and their conversations with him formed his belief, his religious system. He developed what is called the Ringatū religion. Ringatū [refers to] a raised hand, so when you're Pai Mārire, you raise your hand when you're doing karakia (prayer, blessing). So, he set up that movement. As a consequence of being imprisoned, when he finally escaped from the Chatham Islands on a schooner, which they confiscated, [he] returned to Tūranganui and took revenge on those that had imprisoned him. But, it led to the British forces chasing him, and forces from my tribal area, from Ngāti Porou, also pursuing him all over the place, through the [Te] Urewera in particular. So, he had early support from Tūhoe (iwi affiliated with Te Urewera). He just kept evading them (British forces and Ngāti Porou), and then finally ended up in the King Country, where he was allowed by Ngāti Maniapoto and Tainui to take refuge in that area. Because, at that time, the King Country had a boundary that Europeans couldn't cross, so that kept him safe for awhile.

By that time it was the 1870s, and, in 1873, he had a contingent of followers in Te Kūiti, and they built the very first house (whare whakairo, carved meeting house), which is the one that became very influential on houses of that period. What makes [Te Kooti] so important, not only as a religious leader, but as an artistic innovator, was that he introduced imagery that was considered non-traditional or non-customary, or what I call rerekē. The carvers that he worked with painted the names of the ancestors on [the carvings’] chests. Not only did he do that, but he allowed them to incorporate mnemonics that allowed his followers to identify tūpuna (ancestors): for example, Māui tikitiki-a-Taranga. One of the things that he also did was reintroduce demigods from the past. Māui is a particular example; Hine-nui-te-pō is another. Māui had the sun on his shoulder. He had a rope, and then between his legs he had a waka (canoe), which related to his fishing up of the North Island (of Aotearoa). There was this liberal visual vocabulary that [Te Kooti] was responsible forintroducing.

I should say that he wasn't the originator of text. That was introduced in 1843 in another house in Gisborne under a carver called Raharuhi Rukupō, but [Te Kooti] followed that tradition and made it bolder. It was in your face, and it was on all the images, all the carvings. The other thing that he did was develop a very strong tradition of latticework structure. Within the wharenui (meeting house) context, as far as the ancestors are concerned, it tends to be on the side walls. Normally, you have carved poupou (wall pillars, posts, poles). In between the carved poupou, you normally have latticework, [which] is created by forming a lattice out of vertically organised kākaho (the stem of toetoe, a species of tall grass) and horizontally organised timber slats. The timber slats are then held together by a series of cross stitches, and, in developing the cross stitches, patterns are also created. Under [Te Kooti’s] regime, for example, he introduced figurative imagery into the latticework, whereas previously they were totally non-figurative. [He] also [introduced] text script into the latticework. Even in other areas, following his example, in that house, naturalistic imagery started to appear in the latticework. He was liberal. He was breaking all the rules, if there are rules at a particular time, or conventions associated with a particular time. He was very innovative in that. The other thing he was innovative for was introducing naturalistic painting, particularly on the front wall of the house. He's responsible for a lot of innovative developments within the wharewhakairo.

So, when Para[tene] became aware of how important he was as a leader, he developed a whole series of paintings. [Like] a lot of Para’s early paintings, they came out of an engagement between modernism and customary or traditional Māori art practice and fusing the two. There's a strong reference in his work to the woven arts, in particular, and to very strong patterns like niho taniwha, which are the teeth of our mythical beings (taniwha), and also kaokao, which is a pattern about challenging; challenging order, systems, regimes or political parties, or whatever they may be. Within that is a reference to the challenges that Te Kooti was undertaking during his reign as aprophet.

If you're familiar with Paratene Matchitt's work, he picked iconic elements and then used those elements to create sculptures. He did a series of sculptures, which were created out of corrugated iron and timber, and [he] took these symbols and created sculptural forms. You can imagine a moon-shaped structure. [He] made it out of corrugated iron with an oblique angle, so you can see the moon, and then the timber structures were inside that plane against the negative, so he played with a lot of negative and positive [space]. Those were all references to Te Kooti and his visual vocabulary. In a sense, what I'm doing is just taking them and injecting them with newlife.