“What manner of men were they who, by surpassing the achievements of the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean and the Vikings of the North Atlantic, are worthy of being called the supreme navigators of history.” To depict the journeys of Polynesian ancestors on stone age waka/vaka/va’a is to in someway ride the waves with them or perhaps hover above like the frigate waiting for the morning catch. It requires imagination and determination to traverse the stories have been locked in our physical memories, DNA stored. To remember is to laugh, to cry, to celebrate and to mourn. To remember is to sense the mana of our seafaring ancestors, ancestors whose feats of bravery were underpinned by their knowledge and skill. We know the sea. We know the sky. The wind. The islands. And the stars. But to have only these as portents and guides renders most of us modern Polynesians mute for word and image. Stone-age crafts journeyed from the corridors of Melanesia to Fiji, Samoa, Tonga up to Hawaii, down to Aotearoa and across to Rapanui. Toia mai! Te waka! Left with this legacy, we desperately reach out to grasp fading threads of conversation and reflections of the way we used to be.
Te Rangi Hiroa’s Vikings of the Sunrise creates a starting point for exhibition, artistic exploration, and future collaboration. As death lay in the west with the setting sun, new life and hope rose in the east. Here the dawn brings a new net of emerging Pacific artists guided by the one of the fathers of Pacific Island art in New Zealand. Fatu Feu’u’s diverse practice has seen him exhibit widely in New Zealand, the Pacific and Europe. He has also taken part in many projects aimed at developing Polynesian art and artists. Alapika resurfaces to support emerging artists from Canterbury as they navigate tempestuous artistic oceans.
For two artists their stories are told in wood. A Journey combines nails, plank and a splash of pink — contemporary materials in a new twist. Bonnie Tamati (Samoa) maintains her fresh and dynamic approach by building a tactile depiction that traces events on a voyage: stars to guide, fish to sustain and mountains to sight. Carver Rapheal Stowers (Samoa) continues to meld and twist traditional Polynesian forms with contemporary interpretation. Aboard a Tahitian surfboard, his Untitled work surfaces like an ancient God shaped from the forest of Tane.
Karen Schwabe (Te Whānau a Āpanui, Ngāti Porou) departs from painting to bind a manu harakeke that includes her own hand-made paper. Entitled Tutu maiea Tawhirimatea, whakatere ana Poupaka. When Tawhirimatea rises, Poupaka sails, the artist pays homage to Tawhirimatea, God of the wind and to Poupaka, a navigator. Poupaka, according to a Bay of Plenty waka tradition, arrived in Aotearoa two generations before Kupe. The result is a beautiful and uncommon artwork that although playful in its appearance, flew in wartime as a signal for battle and to mark boundaries.
The remaining artists have expressed themselves on canvas and board. Teina Ellia (Rarotonga) explores the Rarotonga invovation “Tangaroa i te titi. Tangaroa i te tata” (Oh Tangaroa in the immensity of space). Her work conveys continuous patterns of time set upon a void that is blank and undetermined, hence the title: Within the immensity of space. Nails feature once more offering a metaphor to the viewer of the practical and hardy nature of these navigators.
In the Night is Nigh, painter Fuivai Fiso (Samoa) channels the emotional and physical suffering bourne by his ancestors in swirls and rages of red over the full brightness of day and the lonely black night. The work has a wonderful sense of passage and present, its largeness reflecting the vast Pacific.
My work, Polynesian Voyaging Chapters 1-8, offers a compression of time and space with the elements of sea and sky, present, past and future are overlaid. Present in the work is also a diagramatic symbol system that has evolved from experiments in establishing my own Pacific languauge. The grid formation also invites physical and mental reconfiguration.
Vikings of the Sunrise presents a fascinating and diverse range of artistic interpretations. Their response illustrates not only how different Pacific artists work but that the results of their making are exciting, varied and powerful. Te Rangi Hiroa asks in his book’s epilogue: “What new net goes fishing?” This net. This day. This exhibition.
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