Te Huringa / Turning Points: Pakeha Colonisation & Maori Empowerment

City Gallery Wellington, 11 August 2007 to 04 November 2007; Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu, 19 December 2008 to 15 February 2009.

City Gallery Wellington is honoured to bring to Wellington this fascinating selection of paintings, prints and drawings drawn from two significant New Zealand collections—The Fletcher Trust and Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare O Rehua Whanganui.

‘Te Huringa / Turning Points’ presents a diverse range of works devoted to the representation of Māori and Māori subject matter by Pākehā and the way in which Māori art practitioners have reflected their own ideas and concerns. The works chart a visual history of this country’s journey from early European contact (the earliest works in the exhibition are hand coloured engravings of Māori architecture, weaponry and utensils from 1826), through settlement, colonisation, protest to mana renewed.

The exhibition, curated by Peter Shaw and Dr. Jo Diamond, comprises over fifty works, arranged within a thematic framework of six clusters, not in an effort to fit each work into a rigid category but to suggest pathways for consideration and provide sometimes unexpected links between works. The exhibition includes work by Francis Dillon Bell, Shane Cotton, Augustus Earle, Robert Ellis, Charles Goldie, Michael Hight, Robyn Kahukiwa, Colin McCahon, Selwyn Muru, Buck Nin, Peter Robinson, and Gordon Walters.

Text extracted from the City Gallery Wellington website.