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Commissioned by the Waimakariri Community Arts Council Trust in 2019, Nathan Pohio’s Raise the anchor unfurl the sails, set course to the centre of an ever setting sun! is the fourth manifestation of the work since its commission for SCAPE Public Art’s 2015 programme in Ōtautahi and as finalist in the 2016 Walters Prize at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and internationally at Documenta in Kassel in 2017. The other versions of Raise the Anchor are in the permanent collections of Mahaanui II Marae, Tūāhiwi, 2019, The National Gallery of Contemporary Art EMST, Athens Greece, 2017, and Little Hagley Park, Otautahi Christchurch, 2019

Raise the anchor... commemorates the visit of the Governor General and his wife, Lord and Lady Plunket, c. 1905 to Tūāhiwi, depicting the traditional Ngāi Tūāhuriri pōwhiri, (formal welcome).  Dr Te Maire Tau notes ‘senior members of Ngāi Tūāhuriri would escort manuhiri visitors from the edge of the Tūāhiwi reserve to the Marae for their pōwhiri.’ It is a photograph that Pohio had immediately recognised the authority of, remarking in 2019.  ‘That particular image had been sitting with me for more than a year or so, knowing one day it would be a project that would reveal itself.’

DETAILS
Nathan Pohio, Raise the anchor unfurl the sails, set course to the centre of an ever setting sun!  2019.  Collection of the Waimakariri District Council

IMAGE
Nathan Pohio introduces the image, which now occupies a wall of the Waimakariri District Council chambers in Rangiora.  Courtesy of North Canterbury News.  Photograph Shelley Topp

Nathan Pohio's Raise the Anchor in the Collection of the Waimakariri District Council

 
 
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