Day 1: Create & Challenge
Day 2: Protest & Demonstrate
Day 3: Tour & Explore
The Future of Monuments
Today, many want to pull down war memorials as expressions of bad politics, especially those memorials that legitimise evil and injustice. Are there 'good' war memorials—and who decides? Can we make use of 'bad' war memorials? How do we understand miscellaneous contemporary war-memorial projects, like Peter Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and Ground Zero in New York, or Weta and Te Papa's The Scale of War and Peter Jackson 'colourising' World War I footage? What form could future memorials take?
Everyday Mysticism: Artists Respond
8pm
Sculptor Glen Hayward’s practice brings the everyday into the gallery in profound and absurd ways. Reconsidering familiar objects is a concern shared by other artists. Join us as they discuss their practices and why they find commonplace objects compelling.
Urn (Live)
9pm
Sonic artists Thomas Carroll (Ngati Maru, Hauraki) and Rob Tyler respond to the themes of Matarau. Fusing taonga pūoro and modular synthesis, they incorporate rongoā plants as a modulation source, to create works inspired by Māori philosophy, cosmology and experimental noise music.
IMAGE Glen Hayward: Wish You Were Here City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi 2022. Photo Elias Rodriguez.
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PART OF
PRINCIPAL FUNDER
Ngatai Taepa
Te Ātiawa, Te Arawa
Ngatai has dedicated his creative practice to the visual language of kōwhaiwhai and the function of toi Māori in the lives of Māori today.
Born in Upper Hutt and raised within a creative family—his father is Wi Taepa, the renowned Māori clay artist—Ngatai was captivated by the arts of the whare whakairo from an early age. The history, concepts and vocabulary of kōwhaiwhai was a focus of his tertiary education. He graduated with a Bachelor of Māori Visual Arts (2000) and Masters of Māori Visual Arts (2003).
Ngatai has contributed to the development of kōwhaiwhai by returning to the palette of many colours used in previous times and the adaptation of new technologies and media. Using computer-aided drawing tools and routing machines, Ngatai’s ‘paintings’ combine kōwhaiwhai design with the surface relief of whakairo rākau. The layers or insets of precisely cut wood are enhanced by his mastery of complementary colour.
Ngatai’s work has constantly explored the shared principles and intersecting relationships between the various Māori art forms. His pursuit of knowledge was recently given full expression as part of the Kahui Toi (leadership group) that created the wharenui, Te Whaioranga o Te Whaiao and marae, Te Rau Karamu, at Massey University in Wellington, where Ngatai is currently Kaihautu Toi Māori, Director of Māori Arts.
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