Please join us for a kōrero with Taranaki artist WharehokaSmith (Taranaki, Te Atiawa, Ngā Ruahine).

He will talk about his newest installation He Puapua ii (a break between waves ii) which he created in response to Indigenous Australian artist Dale Harding’s (Bidjara, Gungalu and Garingbal) current exhibition at the Govett-Brewster, There is no before.

He Puapua ii (a break between waves ii) is made up of two pou, comprising untreated macrocarpa, a wood introduced to Aotearoa in the 1860s and used for building shelters, and kauri, a native timber that is rare and prized. Pou are the individual wooden structural elements which typically work together to form the internal walls of a whare but here are without whakairo (carving). He Puapua ii (a break between waves ii) in the artist’s words ‘makes more tangible the presence of Tūpuna, Atua, Manuhiri and Tangata Whenua, Mātauranga Māori’.

In our kōrero we will explore the process of the collaboration between these two indigenous artists, the significance and history of the materials used and welcome a lively discussion with our audience.