Aukaha

Ko rawaka/
Everything We Need

Ana Hislop [Kāi Tahu, Kāti Huirapa], Emma Hislop [Kāi Tahu, Kāti Huirapa] and Emily Clemett [Kāi Tahu, Kāti Huirapa] recently exhibited at the Blue Oyster Art Project Space in Ōtepoti. The exhibition, titled: ‘Ko rawaka/Everything We Need,’ explores exactly that – from questioning the things we believe we need, to illustrating the things we are inextricably tied to.

Kaituhi SASCHA WALL visited the exhibition and spoke to the artists about how their whakapapa journeys have inspired them.

Walking into the Blue Oyster Art Project Space I could hear the faint sound of casual conversation playing through speakers, breaking through the silence I was expecting from a gallery space.

To the right of the entrance was Emily Clemett’s installation titled ‘Everything You Need.’ This was a long dining table, centred in front of a wall that wore two long, hanging sheets of old-fashioned wallpaper – one painted with the repeating word ‘āe,’ and the other: ‘kāo.’ On the table were silver platters placed at different heights, carrying neat piles of objects.

There was a platter of colourful lollipops, one of old books, matchboxes, Oxo cubes and other nostalgic household items. Public Programmes and Gallery Manager, Beth Garey, encouraged me to take a silver platter from the pile of empty ones of various sizes. I took the smallest and followed Beth’s instruction to fill it with objects from the table I felt I might need.

I chose a matchbox, three small purple candles tied together with twine, a lollipop, a wishbone, a pearlescent white marble, two of the smallest dice I have ever seen, and a playing card – the ace of hearts. I looked down at the overfilled plate in my hand as if holding tiny fragments of my life and spoke to the whakapapa of my connection to each item. “The wishbone reminds me of my mum,” I said, “so I figured I needed that because I need her.”

Beth listened thoughtfully as she placed my items one-by-one into a paper gift bag. She then handed me, not the bag full of my carefully selected taoka, but instead another seemingly empty one. I peered into it, seeing nothing but a small mirror reflecting my surprise.

It made sense – I had been tasked with finding the things I thought I needed and now all I had was me.

Part of the exhibition title ‘Everything We Need,’ was coined by Emily, which set the course for each artist’s contribution. ‘Ko rawaka,’ the second half of the title, was gifted to the kaitā by tuakana Rauhina Scott-Fife and means ‘abundance’ or ‘enough,’ in te reo Māori. Emma Hislop’s work titled ‘Ko rawaka,’ is a 16-minute audio clip – a compilation of kōrero and moments relayed in sound that make up the fabric of Emma’s everyday life.

The audio played on a loop and filled the gallery with a gentle hum. Once the exhibition title had been chosen, Emma pondered on what “everything we need” really meant.

“I would just go out and record myself. I recorded all the pīwakawaka that live in our garden,” she said. “Then I started to think about the really basic things we need, like warmth. So I recorded the dryer going in the middle of winter.”

Through the mixed audio, snippets of kōrero i te reo Māori can be heard, which Emma highlighted as a significant element: “Because I feel like I’m an eternal beginner in te reo … I really struggled to speak at home so I just thought, ‘I'm going to start to speak as much te reo as I can in my daily life’ and applied that.”

Emma’s work is reflective of her journey through the process of collecting moments and considering how they are intricately connected to needs.
Towards the back of the exhibition space was a video playing, titled ‘Te aha wairua,’ which artist Ana Hislop projected onto the front of her mutli-layered fabric installation. Five large, translucent sheets were spaced equally from front to back, each representing the layers of her whakapapa.

The video projection shows, in crisp quality, various bodies of water, which Ana explains represented her father. “The first layer is my dad and he's still alive, so the image is really clear. He's an old surfer and sailor, and really connected to the water.

“The next layer is dad’s dad, and it gets a little bit less clear because he’s passed away.”

The work becomes more symbolic and simplified the deeper into the layers you move. The last layer, a bright red, shows an inverted triangle stitched into the fabric using layers of yarn with strands falling from its edges like blood.

“The end is Motoitoi,” says Ana. “She was chief’s daughter and Richard Driver was a whaler who got into an argument with her dad. They were about to kill him, and she kind of took a shine to him, threw her cloak over him to save his life.The triangle represents her cloak, but also womanhood, the strength of women in Kāi Tahu history.”

The exhibition left me moved. For Māori who weren’t raised in their Māoritaka, the haereka back to te ao Māori can be one full of whakamā. We often believe we are required to collect mātauraka; language, resources and lived experiences just to be Māori, but the mirror-bag plot twist served to remind me that whakapapa is enough.

Blue Oyster provided the kaitā with tuakana mentorship and Māori archivist Rauhina Scott-Fyffe [Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe] provided cultural support.