ARTHIST115 Chap.10 Contemporary Māori and Pacific Art
Contemporary Māori and Pacific Art
The course's first tutorial tours the University of Auckland art collection, a living collection of around 2,000 works with about 90 per cent on display.
Its contemporary Māori and Pacific works preview the final weeks of the course and meet two learning outcomes: how Māori artists reflect, adapt and challenge new presences and materials, and how Pacific artists translate Indigenous knowledge and urban experience into new forms. Ane Tonga's Grills series brings Tongan nifo koula into conversation with hip-hop culture across three generations of women.
Lisa Reihana's six-metre Māramatanga animates ancestral figures drawn from the carvings of Tāne-nui-a-Rangi. Fiona Pardington photographs an 1837 phrenological life cast of the chief Matoua Tawai and restores him as an ancestor. Read together, these works show contemporary practice as a continuum with earlier carving, adornment and taonga rather than a break from them.
The later lectures on modernisms in Aotearoa, contemporary Māori art, mana wāhine and contemporary Pacific art extend the same thread, and works previewed in the introduction, such as Robyn Kahukiwa's Papatūānuku (1986) and Fatu Feu'u's Nuanua Malama (1988), belong to it.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The University collection as a living collection
- 02
Learning outcomes on Māori and Pacific artists
- 03
Ane Tonga's Grills and indigenised gold teeth
- 04
Lisa Reihana's Māramatanga and digital ancestors
- 05
Fiona Pardington and the colonial life casts
- 06
Planning a three-work essay on one artist
Worked example · free
Explain how Ane Tonga's Grills reworks body adornment
- 1Identify: Ane Tonga, Nan, 2012, from the Grills series of 2012 to 2014, showing her nan's gold dentures.
- 1Explain the practice: nifo koula seals gold onto the teeth, often using gold from heirlooms such as wedding rings.
- 1Analyse meaning: the gold can mark wealth, identity or a milestone, layering the teeth with memory across three generations of women.
- 1Connect: the title Grills links nifo koula to black American hip-hop culture, showing an introduced practice that has become indigenised.
Key terms
- Life cast
- A plaster record of a living person's face and head, made in the Pacific by Dumoutier in 1837.
- Phrenology
- A nineteenth-century theory that assigned mental traits to head shapes, used to classify race types.
- Digital Marae
- Lisa Reihana's series that includes Mahuika (2001), shown in the introductory lecture.
Contemporary Māori and Pacific Art FAQ
Why does the course begin with a tour of the University art collection?
The collection is a living one, used by students and researchers, with around 2,000 works and about 90 per cent on display. The tour introduces works that return later in the course, such as pieces by Ane Tonga, Lisa Reihana and Fiona Pardington, and gives material for the tutorial reflections.
What is Lisa Reihana's Māramatanga?
A six-metre digital installation from 2024 featuring six performers who embody ātua and ancestral figures inspired by the carvings of Tāne-nui-a-Rangi at Waipapa Marae. The performers are students of the University's Dance Studies programme, and their solos were refined with a choreographer from Atamira Dance Company.
How do contemporary works fit the course's continuum theme?
Each tour work answers something older: Pardington's portraits answer colonial life casts, Tonga's Grills answer heirloom gold teeth, and Reihana's installation answers carved ancestors. Treating contemporary art as a continuation of carving, adornment and taonga lets an essay trace development over time, which the first essay question asks for.
How does Fiona Pardington respond to the colonial life casts?
She traced the 1837 casts made by Dumoutier on the French voyage of Dumont d'Urville to museums in New Zealand and France and photographed them in soft, warm light. Enlarging the casts gives them monumentality and emphasises details such as moko, so a specimen made for phrenology becomes an ancestor treated with empathy.
Exam move
Visit or revisit the collection works you can see in person and write one reflection-style paragraph on each, noting what you observed directly. Then build an artist file for one artist with three works, dates and a theme from the fourth essay question. Practise linking each contemporary work to an earlier object from Chapters 2 to 4 in a single sentence.
Keep a note of where each collection work hangs, so a reflection visit takes minutes rather than an afternoon.
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