A massive and cumbersome book on New Zealand art could have been improved by a measure of shrinkage
To begin by putting the recently published hefty hardback book Whenua (it weighs in at 2.6 kilos, according to our kitchen scales) into context, it is a publication associated with a large exhibition He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetū. The exhibition, a new configuration of the gallery’s permanent collection, opened in August 2024 and will run until some time in 2026. The book reproduces in generous scale (often full-page or even double-page in some cases) all 140 works in the exhibition, ranging across paintings, prints, sculptures, weaving, carving, ceramics, photographs and moving image artworks. Some of the works reproduced are thoroughly familiar (van der Velden, Angus, Lusk, McCahon, Hotere, Hammond) but many are not well-known, and even familiar works are placed in a context that encourages fresh perception.
Many of the gallery’s curatorial staff (including the book’s editorial team) contributed to the exhibition and the book, supplemented by numerous others (more than 30 contributors are listed) with extended captions, essays, interviews, personal statements, recorded conversations and other forms of written documentation. So copious is this supplementary material that designer Aaron Beehre has employed numerous different typefaces and coloured papers — pale green, fawn, white, brown — to make sense of it all. While a compendious and valuable resource, it is a somewhat arduous book to read, not least because it is so bulky that you have to read it sitting at a table or desk. Don’t try to read this book in bed; if you dozed off you’d be liable to cause yourself a serious injury.
All this co-ordinated effort is in aid of earnestly exploring an undoubtedly weighty topic: “the relationship between tākata and whenua – people and land … a long thread that weaves through the art history of Aotearoa New Zealand”, in the words of the back cover blurb, which continues, “themes of belonging, colonisation, environmentalism, land use and migration are explored through historical and contemporary artworks by more than 100 of the country’s most important artists”. The bilingual emphasis of this statement indicates that Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetū is determined to pay much more than lip service to bi-and-multiculturalism (even Pacific and Asian migration gets a look in) and to reconfigure the gallery’s permanent collection in the light of this perspective. A similar process is occurring in other public art galleries around the country.
As a sign of this determination (running, it should be noted, in precisely the opposite direction to the current Government’s policies) all place names are invariably given in both English and Māori out of the recognition that the naming of places is indissolubly bound up with one’s sense of identity, habitation and ownership. This can lead to some awkwardness and clumsiness of expression. The book is strewn with sentences such as this: “Built on drained swampland, the coastal city of Otautahi Christchurch is banked on one side by rounded gold and green hills, and in the distance, across patchwork plains, the long jagged range of Kā Tiriti-o-te-moana, the Southern Alps … In summer, the land is seared by the hot, dry nor’west winds that roar across Kā Pākihi-whakatekateka-a-Waitaha, the Canterbury plains …”
Such formulations, while understandable and defensible in terms of the book’s intentions, inevitably sound ponderous with continuous repetition. However, having spent long periods of my life in Christchurch and through my own research and writing documenting its cultural history, I know how deeply imbedded in the city’s history and outlook is its monocultural Eurocentrism (or more particularly Anglocentrism) and that any attempt to change this state of affairs is to set one’s chisel to the hardest stone. One can only applaud the ambition, though the results can at times seem cumbersome.
The book is divided into eight sections (or chapters) each nominated by a phrase in Māori and English. Examples are: Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au/I am the land, and the land is me or Te oraka o te takata, he whenua, he oneone/The wellbeing of the people comes from the land and the soil. All Māori phrases are in the southern or Kai Tahu dialect in which ‘k’ replaces ‘ng’, hence, for example, ‘Aoraki’ (Mount Cook) rather than ‘Aorangi’.
A quick summary of the general topics covered in the chapters is: origin myths; mountain landscapes; the South Island (Te Waipounamu); resistance to colonialism; the forests; food sources; land use; environmentalism and ecology. Although the perspective is predominantly the Waitaha Canterbury region, it is not exclusively so and other parts of the South Island and Aotearoa come into play. For example in the chapter on resistance, Ka whaiwhai tonu mātou!/We will fight on, works by Robin Kahukiwa, Areta Wilkinson, Gottfried Lindauer, William Dunning, Ralph Hotere, Shona Rapira Davies, Diane Prince, Robert Jahnke and Emily Karaka illustrate various aspects of Māori resistance to colonialism, not just those associated with Kai Tahu and Te Waipounamu the South Island.
Perhaps the easiest way of indicating how Whenua is organised is to focus on one particular chapter as an example. Somewhat randomly I have chosen to focus on Chapter 7: Te oraka o te takata, he whenua, he oneone/The wellbeing of the people comes from the land and the soil, of which the editor/curator is Chloe Cull (Kai Tahu, Kai Te Ruahikihiki, Ingarani, Aerani) who is pouarataki curator Māori at CAG. It’s one of three chapters edited/curated by her which suggests that her influence on the publication is greater than anyone else’s.
The section/chapter begins with a series of images of art works relating to “a history of land use in Aotearoa, including stories of planting, gathering and sharing kai, food and wool production, and the use of whenua for art and adornment”. Included are black and white photographs by Mark Adams of denuded landscapes at Horomaka (Banks Peninsula), photograms and etchings of Māori taoka by Areta Wilkinson and Alexis Neal, a drawing by Russell Clark and a video by Matavai Taulangau documenting food planting practices, and glass objects by Jimmy Ma’ia celebrating taro.
Next in the chapter come texts by Paora Tapsell and the Kaihaukai Collective about various Māori traditional practices and aspects of sovereignty. Another group of images follows, focused on Pākehā farming practices, including woodcuts by Bing Dawe of freezing works scenes, porcelain by Cheryl Lucas related to dairy farming, paintings by Olivia Spencer Bower and Juliet Peter of pastoral farming scenes, and an ink drawing by Toss Woollaston of sheep shearing.
These are followed with essays by Cosmo Kentish-Barnes about farming and sustainability and an essay by Chloe Geoghegan about how various Pākehā women artists have related to the land, as illustrated in art works by Rosemary Johnson, Margaret Riley, Julie McIntosh Wilson, Nancy Mason, Spencer Bower and a Māori weaving collective plus images by a number of Māori ceramic artists (both male and female). Kirsty Dunn contributes essays in parallel columns (and different print colours) about clay and water, while Emily Case and Lily Lee, migrants from Hawaii and China respectively, reflect on the immigrant experience alongside images by John Pule, Soarwit Songstaya, Jacquelyn Fang Greenbank and Bev Moon in a range of different media. The section/chapter ends with a conversation about migrancy between Fang and Greenbank.
As this bald summary suggests there’s an almost bewildering range of art works and commentary and this is just one chapter of seven. On average there are about 20 art works reproduced in each chapter together with multiple written commentaries of various sorts.
You’ve heard about brutalism in architecture (raw concrete, minimalist, monumental forms, absence of decorative detail etc). It occurs to me that Whenua is an example of brutalism in book design: monumental, stark, handsome, formidable, if not especially reader-friendly. Everything is on a massive scale. As an example, the design device of preceding the text with double-page spreads of details from illustrated works is here extended extravagantly to 14 pages (seven double-page spreads)! Each chapter heading, white on dark brown in huge type, takes two full pages. Is it over the top? I’m inclined to think so. I think the whole production (physically as well as content-wise) could have been improved by a measure of shrinkage. On the other hand Whenua is altogether an impressive achievement and certainly demonstrates the willingness of Christchurch Art GalleryTe Puna O Waiwhetū to put its institutional weight behind its bicultural mission. Better that by far than the current Government’s cowardly and Trump-like retreat into monocultural nostalgia.
