Ōtautahi has a newly significant public work of art and it is without precedent in Aotearoa.  Te Waiatatanga Mai o te Atua The Song of the Gods is located in the Observatory Tower at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, telling and revealing a version of the Ngāi Tahu creation story as it was documented in 1849 by Matiaha Tiramōrehu.  (Born at Kaiapoi pā in the early decades of the nineteenth century Tiramōrehu came from a high-ranking family of the prominent hapū Ngāi Tūāhuriri of Ngāi Tahu.)

Te Waiatatanga Mai o te Atua The Song of the Gods is a Ngāi Tahu project that brings together five artists guided by its appointed creative lead, Aotearoa New Zealand artist and Arts Laureate, Dr Areta Wilkinson (Ngāi Tahu). The  artists are: Turumeke Harrington (Kāi Tahu, Rangitāne), Alex McLeod (Ngāi Tahu, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Rangi, Tainui, Ngāti Porou), Kate Stevens West (Ngāi Tahu), Christine Harvey (Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Moriori, Ngāti Mutunga, Te Ati Awa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira), and Ariana Tikao (Kāi Tahu).   

Collectively, their arts practices encompass traditional and contemporary art in sculpture, carving, painting and sound, bringing to life and reinterpreting Matiaha Tiramōrehu’s story of creation in an encounter that is described by The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora as ‘an immersive, sensory experience on a monumental scale.’  

Te Waiatatanga Mai o te Atua The Song of the Gods is also a welcoming voice for all visiting The Arts Centre, the restoration of its Observatory Tower damaged in the 2010 earthquakes and its 1897 Townsend Teece Telescope now sharing space with Te Waiatatanga Mai o te Atua, both with an agenda that considers a sky and universe without end.  After many centuries of thought, the current consensus is that ‘there is a spherical surface, the cosmic event horizon (13.8 billion light-years from Earth), beyond which nothing can be seen even in principle.’

It is also a story that for each of the artists and visitors to Te Waiatatanga Mai o te Atua, begins in Te Pō, the darkness.  Christine Harvey is a tā moko expert recognised for her revival of customary tattoo practices, and also acknowledged as a multidisciplinary artist, her suspended sculpture, Te Waiatatanga bringing together two intersecting looping koru in a pūhoro design, (representing speed, swiftness and agility), her pūhoro connected to whakapapa, the genealogical links that bind people and connect all things within te ao Māori.   

Turumeke Harrington’s, Ruatahito is a contemporary pou (support or post), with a scale and presence  that reveals her background in industrial design and fine arts, Harrington also observes that it may also symbolise ‘the exchange of water as mist rising, and tongues rising and descending...  [and] as an abstracted form, ‘Ruatahito,’ can mean many different things, like ‘the power of women to support and nurture, often the source of strength and unity within a whānau.’

Alex McLeod’s carved tōtara, Ruatipua, comes from more than two decades of practicing toi whakairo customary carving over more than 20 years. For Ruatipua, he has given shared attention to Toi wharairo (art carving), and the raw state of’ the original form of the tree, ‘also wanting to ‘capture the hei tiki form well known throughout Te Waipounamu the South Island.’

The subject of Kate Stevens West’s sculptural pou, Tokomaunga, gives voice and attention to the natural world, ‘exploring themes of whakapapa (Māori identity) and whānau (family) and tīpuna (ancestor), bringing together Tokoimaunga (meeting house tree poles) with designs and patterns from the natural world, ‘reminding us of our own connections to the whenua.’  Working with plywood, oil paints, steel and tacks, she notes, ‘at the base of the pou are painted plants and flowers inspired by the creations of Tāne but also representing Papatūānuku, the earth mother.’  

Arts Laureate and sound artist, Ariana Tikaos with Paddy Free’s,  Te Tīmataka/The Beginning, possesses a tangible and haunting, sensory presence, a narrative informing a ’ journey of darkness into light and the sounds of creations.  The sounds of Pūmotomoto, a flute, can be heard emerging from Te Pō, the darkness, ‘emulated by taoka puoro, ancestral instruments whose sounds connect us to atua, the many gods of different realms.’

 There is an authentic sense of humility and grandeur to Te Waiatatanga Mai o te Atua The Song of the Gods, a sense of the darkness from which ‘all life comes’ encompassing the presence of humanity in relationships with the natural world that affirm and inspires, from a ‘sky and a universe without end.’

See: www.artscentre.org.nz/te-waiatanga-mai-o-te-atua     

 DETAILS

Te Waiatatanga Mai o te Atua The Song of the Gods

 Observatory Tower, The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, 2 Worcester Blvd

IMAGE:

1. Alex McLeod, Pou Ruatipua, (Ngāi Tahu, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Rangi, Tainui, Ngāti Porou). Photographer: Angelica Dumaguin