From where did you drink? I drank from the life-giving sacred waters of Waikoropupū. Where is your house? It is underneath the protective korowai of the guardian Huriawa. Where does your work come from? It comes from the hands of my ancestors. Who are they? They are the people of the nest of the Pipiwharauroa. (Waiata -Holly Taiko-Weir)
These works are the application of scraping back to reveal and bring forward the light. The black, white, and red with the application of gold symbolic in their own way to tell the stories that are relatable to the past and the present. They are quiet works in the sense they require contemplation and viewing slowly to allow the different aspects and the relationships to each other to reveal themselves. This is the manner they were worked.
In our traditional nga toi, artwork has its own ‘purakau’ or stories attached to them. The colours, forms, and materials as well as the motifs used, enhances these purakau. They act as markers to the past and present that we face brought together so our backs are towards the future, the unknown. The purakau are pointers, markers that direct our thinking and thoughts on any given situation. We have been gifted these as well as the forms by our tipuna (ancestors), known or unknown. The stories are of the whenua (land) where we stand together, of the manu (birds) (who were the first inhabitants/iwi here), the plants, insects, rocks and all other aspects. Through our whakakpapa going back to Papatuanuku and Ranginui everything is related, we are all part of the whole and connected.
