Ngā Tai Whetū | in Māori Astronomy Traditions there is a Great Waka, canoe, in the sky. This puhoro pattern represents the current beneath the waka, guiding it from the Eastern horizon to the West throughout the year.
This piece contains layers of uku collected with my nieces at low tide by our marae, Ngāi Tūpoto ki Motukaraka. There is grey uku mixed in with ngārahu, soot ink to represent the dark night. On the back is a light burgundy brown mixed in with kōkōwai. It looks like our pae Maunga and valleys up home. Together they represent the celestial realm and the earthly world. Ko te kauae runga me te kauae raro.
Ngārahu, uku from Motukaraka, kōkōwai and pukepoto on aute, secured with sapele mahogany baton made by Amelia Fagence and muka aho by Katie Middleton. 1130 x 460mm.
Photos @samuel_hartnett
A tiny snippet of the process. This was a pretty tall and healthy tree. 🌱
Ka tihore te hiako mai i te rākau | peeling the bark off the inner core of the aute plant.
As aute makers this is our favourite sound!! Harvesting our own plants is definitely the most labour intensive part of the process for us but it is rewarding and there are so many learnings in the ways in which our tupuna moved and saw their taiao.
Mauri ora 💪🏽
@atarangia
This body of work that I have been creating these past months explores the shades of darkness within Te Pō. The phase in our Creation story that I’m sure resonates with many of us. It is The Great Night, the Long solitary Darkness, the Deepest Black, the Intense Unseeing Night and the Engulfing, Erasing Darkness.. Te Pō Nui, Te Pō Roa, Te Pōuriuri, Te Pō Kerekere.. Te Pō Tē-Kitea, Te Pō Tangotango.. it is the kind of Night that feels unending but I have come to learn that all phases transform and eventually pass.
These pieces are the kind that have spilled out of me with crashing eagerness but at the same time it has been slow work, sometimes cautious but always in reverence. These long processes that command my attention, have given me a steady focus. Helping me return to myself. And Re-remember my practice and the many pieces of it i have been building slowly over the last ten years.
I’m pleased to be presenting them finally at the @aotearoaartfair alongside @n.smithgallery where I look forward to gathering and seeing the many familiar faces of artists and art lovers alike.
Stunning photos by @sebcharles who really has captured all the shades of darkness I am trying to convey.
Mauri ora
Coming Soon!
Nikau Hindin and Naminapu Maymuru-White
𝘊𝘖𝘚𝘔𝘖𝘓𝘖𝘎𝘐𝘌𝘚
31 MAY - 9 AUG 2026
OPENING EVENT - SAT 30 MAY, 4PM
Cosmologies brings together the work of Nikau Hindin and Naminapu Maymuru-White into an exhibition that generates dialogue shaped by the night sky. Across Indigenous knowledge systems celestial bodies are not distant matter but living presences, they are repositories of law, memory, navigation, spirit energy and ecological care. Stars orient seasonal cycles and kinship structures, binding people to land, sea, and sky. In this exhibition, cosmology is not metaphor but method: a way of mapping relations across generations and more-than-human worlds. A way to locate our own position in this world and in this life. Working with aute (barkcloth) and bark painting respectively, both artists translate lived astronomical knowledge into contemporary abstraction while remaining grounded in ancestral responsibility.
Image | Nikau Hindin photographed by @samuel_hartnett
Me haere ngātahi ngā tauira no Te Whare Pora me te aute. He hononga whakapapa, he piringa mau roa.
Tauira - Patterns from The House of Fibre Arts should journey together. This is a genealogical connection, a long and enduring relationship.
Find the manawa line so the placement of tauira looks like it comes from within. Tune into your taiao materials- whether it be aute, kōkōwai, pounamu, kōhatu, koiwi or rākau - let them guide you. Shape them to become as beautiful and graceful as they possibly can. Our role as ringatoi is to Bring out their potential. Not to plaster our ego all over something that is already beautiful and perfect as it is. Through honouring our materials we are in service to their whakapapa. As teina to our taiao we have a lot to learn and I am always humbled by the lessons Aute serves me daily. Grateful to my teachers for their guidance and strictness… especially Rangi Kipa’s 😆
Video by @sebcharles
The recent passing of my teacher Dante Bonica has made me think about his workshop - Ruawhaihanga. A space mandated by Ranginui Walker to keep the practices of our tūpuna alive. He created a wānanga grounded in tikanga - where this goal was enacted everyday and his generosity and aroha was abundant.
Ruawhaihanga is the teaching environment I am always trying emulate for my tauira and pia. In my practice I still staunchly follow the values that Dante instilled in us because to labour and embody the movements of our tūpuna is to create a portal to Hawaiki. 🌀
Dante always emphasised that the level of excellence achieved by our tūpuna was unmatched and so to strive for that excellence is to carry on their legacy of making and be in service to our taiao.
It has become clear to me now that because the learning we did with Dante was so embodied, subtle and over many years, the values instilled in me and the ways of working I learned then, have become so normalised and inherent in my practice it is easy to forget where the knowledge transfer stopped and I began.
When the aute trees humbles me, or a process I didn’t realise I knew instinctively comes out of me, or years later I suddenly realise my tools need a slight adjustment — I know that is an intuition that was nurtured in me by Dante. And I hope what I give to my students and the environments that I facilitate can someday match that level of wānanga. Because creating and teaching a curriculum reclaiming mātauranga aute is my cultural practice and something that is of as much importance to me as the toi aute I create. ❤️
So as I think about our teacher Dante and all the gifts he gave us, I hope to teach consciously, intentionally, sustainably and with aroha for the next generation of aute makers.
Tohu Wairua Aroha Harris @tohu._.harris e tāku pia, e tāku tāura, tēnei te tūmanako ki a whāia e te tāua te mātauranga o tēnei wānanga o Te Whare Pora, i roto i te matemateāone. Haere ake nei. Tina! Kia tina. Ki te Wheiao ki te ao mārama. Tīhei Mauri Ora!
So wonderful to gather with our incredibly talented Aotearoa artist community 💙 especially my kaiako @rangi_kipa 🌀 and soo special to show alongside my tuakana @raukura.turei with @seasonaotearoa .
Plus @thea_ceramics in KURUTAI curated by @chantelmatthews right next door 🤗 so proud x
Another amazing (and overwhelming 😅) @aotearoaartfair Opening Night! Congratulations to all the artists and galleries xx
'The apocalypse has already happened to us. So we know how to survive.'
Nikau Hindin (Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Ngai Tūpoto) reflects on System Release, survival and the leadership of Mātauranga Māori in a time of global uncertainty.
Her manu aute (barkcloth kites) are the first to be made from local paper mulberry bark in over 200 years. A symbol of defiance in their joy, they carry histories of navigation, communication and connection between the earthly and spiritual realms.
Now showing as a part of System Release, curated by Dr Emily Cormack.
Open Tues–Sun, 11am–5pm
Video: @craatecreative@nikaugabrielle #SystemRelease #TarraWarraArt #WurundjeriCountry #YarraValleyandDandenongRanges #ArtPlaceIdeas
The big reveal is always my favourite part, it’s like time unfurling, a lifetime in a moment. I think of all the hours, all the research, all the questions, all the plants and all the people that it took to get to this point. In my first ever studio, beating aute with my mate Katie. Aute harvested locally, with my niece, by the full moon. Caring for this taonga tuku iho and supported to do so, by my whanau, hapū, friends, and tūpuna. Grateful for this taonga and the privilege of being an artist. 🙏🏽
