A Whakapapa of Tradition: One Hundred Years of Ngato Porou Carving, 1830-1930 - Hardcover

Ellis, Ngarino; Robertson PhD, Natalie

9781869407377: A Whakapapa of Tradition: One Hundred Years of Ngato Porou Carving, 1830-1930

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1869407377 ISBN 13: 9781869407377

Publisher: Auckland University Press, 2016

From the emergence of the chapel and the wharenui in the nineteenth century to the rejuvenation of carving by Apirana Ngata in the 1920s, Maori carving went through a rapid evolution from 1830 to 1930. Focusing on thirty meeting houses, Ngarino Ellis tells the story of Ngati Porou carving and a profound transformation in Maori art. Beginning around 1830, three previously dominant art traditions – waka taua (war canoes), pataka (decorated storehouses) and whare rangatira (chief’s houses) – declined and were replaced by whare karakia (churches), whare whakairo (decorated meeting houses) and wharekai (dining halls). Ellis examines how and why that fundamental transformation took place by exploring the Iwirakau School of carving, based in the Waiapu Valley on the East Coast of the North Island. What makes a tradition in Maori art? Ellis asks. How do traditions begin? Who decides this? Conversely, how and why do traditions cease? And what forces are at play which make some buildings acceptable and others not? Beautifully illustrated with new photography by Natalie Robertson, and drawing on the work of key scholars to make a new synthetic whole, this book will be a landmark volume in the history of writing about Maori art.

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About the Author:

Ngarino Ellis (Ngapuhi, Ngati Porou) is a senior lecturer in Art History and co-ordinator of the Museums and Cultural Heritage Programme at the University of Auckland. She is the co-editor with Deidre Brown of Te Puna: Maori Art from Northland (Reed, 2007) and with Witi Ihimaera of Te Ata: Maori Art from the East Coast, New Zealand (Reed, 2002), as well as the author of a number of scholarly articles. Natalie Robertson (Ngati Porou, Clann Dh�nnchaidh) is a photographic artist and senior lecturer at AUT University. Robertson has an MFA from the University of Auckland. She has exhibited extensively in public institutions throughout New Zealand and internationally, including a solo exhibition, Te Ahikaroa: Home Fires Burning (2014), at the C. N. Gorman Museum at the University of California, Davis, in 2014.

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