The book brings them together again by illuminating the contribution of Māori visual artists to contemporary architecture and the work of Māori architectural designers in contemporary art.

Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art (Auckland University Press, 2024) is the outcome of a 12-year research project charting Māori creative practice from Polynesian arrival to the present day in Aotearoa New Zealand and, more recently, around the globe. ‘Toi’ is a kupu Māori (Māori word) that embraces all creative practices. ‘Art’ is a slippery term and can include fine arts, architecture, craft and design. ‘Art’ tends to be used in its narrowest sense in Aotearoa New Zealand as meaning visual art; this is partly a result of historical factors (which I describe below), and local and central government and philanthropic arts-funding mechanisms, which tend to be targeted towards non-commercial creative disciplines. This distinction does not exist to the same extent in some other countries. It would be hard to imagine any history of Italian art that did not include architecture and vice versa, for example.

One of the objectives of Toi Te Mana is to situate toi Māori alongside the other great creative traditions of the world. The book represents three lifetimes’ worth of research in the field. The authors are: Associate Professor Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou), from the University of Auckland, who is currently the only full-time Māori art historian employed at a tertiary institution; our late colleague Professor Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī), who taught at the University of Canterbury (1975–2004), was director of art and collection services at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (2004–2009) and, then, Head of the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts until his death in 2014; and me.

I began my academic career with a six-year stint teaching Māori art history at the University of Canterbury, where Mane-Wheoki was my mentor, before returning to the University of Auckland architecture programme as a staff member. The idea of combining forces and intellects to produce a substantial book on toi Māori was irresistible once we found ourselves on the same campus. Ellis and I continued on this journey after Mane-Wheoki’s passing, building and expanding on our founding ideas to create a substantial and comprehensive art history.

Toi Te Mana was no small undertaking. Its ‘prequel’, Does Māori Art History Matter? (Victoria University of Wellington, 2014), explains our year-long deliberations about how to research and write an Indigenous history of toi Māori. One of the challenges was that a book is written and read as a linear narrative, yet Māori time and stories about toi are cyclical.

We found a solution in organising the book’s 19 chapters according to Ngā Kete e Toro, the legendary three baskets of Māori knowledge. Te Kete Tuatea, sometimes referred to as ‘the basket of light’, contains the continuum of toi Māori from within the customary world. For instance, in this kete, the ‘Ngā Whare: Architecture’ chapter begins with Athfield Architects and Te Kāhui Toi’s Te Whaioranga o Te Whaiao wharenui (meeting house), which opened at Massey University’s Pukeahu campus in 2021, and then temporally shifts back and forth across eight centuries of building. We wanted to challenge the idea perpetuated in some histories that customary architecture and other toi are practices of the past and, instead, show the ways in which they change and respond to contemporaneous needs, ideas and materials.

For Te Kete Tuauri, ‘the basket of the unknown’, engagements with Pākehā bring about a complex set of new opportunities and difficult challenges in toi Māori. Two of the chapters in this kete examine the effect that European architecture had on Māori architecture via 19th-century Christian missions and Māori prophetic movements from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries.

Another two chapters and a text box in ‘the basket of pursuit’, Te Kete Aronui, discuss the architecture of social reform built by Te Puea Hērangi (Tainui, 1883–1952), Tā Āpirana Ngata (Ngāti Porou, 1874–1950) and Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana (Ngāti Apa, Ngā Rauru, 1873– 1939), urban Māori art and architecture, and modern and contemporary Māori architecture by Māori architects and architectural designers. The latter practitioners include William Bloomfield (Ngāti Kahungunu, c. 1885–1969), William Tuarau Royal (Ngāti Raukawa, 1931–2013), John Scott (Taranaki, Te Arawa, 1924–1992), Rewi Thompson (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Raukawa, 1953–2016), Tere Insley (Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau ā Apanui), Louise Wright (Te Arawa, Tūwharetoa, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Te Aitanga a Hauiti, Rongowhakaata), Elisapeta Heta (Ngāti Wai, Waikato-Tainui), Rau Hoskins (Ngāti Hau, Ngāpuhi), Nicholas Dalton (Ngāi Tūhoe, Te Arawa) and Jade Kake (Ngāpuhi, Te Whakatōhea, Te Arawa). This is just a snapshot of the many talented Māori architects and architectural designers in practice, the complete list being so impressive that I have resolved to write a new book about contemporary Māori architecture.

Much of what we know about older, customary architecture and its makers comes from early European drawings and paintings, manuscripts and collected taonga Māori (Māori treasures). Toi Te Mana reflects on the limitations of pictorial and written sources of this type and the complex situation of taonga Māori in museum collections. There is a particular kind of sadness associated with the many hundreds of pare (door lintels), paepae (thresholds), poupou (wall posts), tukutuku (lattice wall panels), heke (rafters), tāhuhu (ridge poles) and other Māori building elements that lie dormant in museums and separated from their original whare (buildings) and stories. The fragmentation of Māori architecture into ‘parts’ and the recontextualisation of those parts as ‘artefacts’, and, after the 1984 Te Māori exhibition, as ‘art objects’ by museums and art galleries, initiated the uncoupling of Māori art from Māori architecture in academic research.

Ellis and I treat museum-held architectural taonga as ancestors with their own stories to tell about construction, spiritual worlds and the whakapapa they depict. An unexpected consequence of the research for the Christian influence chapter was identifying a kūwaha (doorway), two pare (door lintels) and a paepae (threshold) in museum collections around the world as being from a consignment of carvings sent from the Bay of Islands to London in 1823 and thought to have been lost. Mane-Wheoki’s text box on the Mātaatua wharenui is an extract from his 1993 report to the Waitangi Tribunal for the Ngāti Awa claim (Wai 46); his report contributed to the house’s repatriation to the Mātaatua tribe from Otago Museum in 1996, 117 years after its removal from Whakatāne. Toi Māori histories can be powerful tools for reuniting communities with their taonga.

In addition to architecture, the book explores a breadth of toi practice, from the customary arts of whatu (weaving), raranga (plaiting), whakairo rākau (wood carving) and moko (designs inked on Māori) to contemporary fine arts, craft and design. It explores the ways in which Māori have adorned themselves, their built and natural environments, and exhibition spaces here and abroad, as well as the tools, materials, training and practices needed for these forms of expression. We have centred makers and making in our writing. Three consistent themes across all the practices discussed in every kete are whenua (the land), whakapapa (genealogy) and tikanga (customs). Some toi, like wharenui situated on marae, are positioned firmly within these themes. At the other end of the spectrum, is toi that expresses the grief of colonisation and longing for a connection to whenua, whakapapa and tikanga. Many of Robyn Kahukiwa’s (Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga a Hauiti, Ngāti Kōnohi, Te Whānau a Ruataupare) paintings made between the 1970s and the 1990s use the marae and its architecture as metaphors for a tikanga-based world that urban Māori women aspire to reclaim.

As explained in Toi Te Mana, up until the late 1930s, the practices of designing, constructing and embellishing Māori buildings were inter-related and sometimes involved the same practitioners, usually tohunga whakairo (master carvers and builders). In an earlier Architecture NZ article, I have discussed the historical factors that led to architecture and visual art being considered as separate practices from the mid-20th century onwards, such as: socio-economic challenges; the ‘professionalisation’ of the building industry; low numbers of Māori students entering architectural education; and the rise of Māori modernist artists out of the Department of Education’s Art Advisory Service (itself, the topic of a whole Toi Te Mana chapter by Mane-Wheoki). Consequentially, for several decades, Māori architectural designers have been outnumbered by Māori visual artists trained by their own communities, or in wānanga or other tertiary institutions. The cost of the services of architectural designers and architects has also put their potential contribution to Māori architecture out of reach for many Māori communities.

Nevertheless, Māori aesthetics, concepts and functional programmes have become increasingly important in public buildings and spaces since the 150th anniversary of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Treaty of Waitangi signing. There was a discernible ‘mood change’ towards the representation of Indigeneity in architecture used by the general public at this time. Māori architects, architectural designers and visual artists have been important contributors to the new architectural responses arising in the decades since.

Contemporary visual artists were part of the vanguard for self-determined projects by Māori communities. Since at least the 1970s, artists including Arnold Wilson (Ngāi Tūhoe, Te Arawa, 1928–2012), Cliff Whiting (Te Whānau ā Apanui, 1936–2017), Paratene Matchitt (Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau ā Apanui, Te Whakatōhea, 1933–2021) and Cath Brown (Ngāi Tahu, 1933–2004) created murals and wood sculptures for Māori communities wanting to indigenise the shells of new marae buildings that were otherwise non-Māori in appearance. We can see these initiatives coming full circle, as discussed in the book, with Bruce Stewart’s (Ngāti Raukawa, Te Arawa) Tapu Te Ranga Marae complex established in Wellington’s Island Bay in 1974, where communities worked as designers/self-builders/artists. Other urban marae, institutional marae (including those in schools, universities, wānanga, and healthcare and correctional facilities), Māori hostels and Māori community centres have likewise been designed to accommodate the social and cultural needs of individuals and whānau where possible, and include Māori visual art and the work of tohunga whakairo, most notably Pakaariki Harrison (Ngāti Porou, 1928–2008), who is profiled in the book in a text box by Ellis.

Architects and architectural and urban designers are also commissioning a new generation of contemporary Māori painters, sculptors, installation artists and designers to provide artworks that acknowledge the mana whenua presence. These are often codesigned with wider communities and can be distinguished from the awkward late-20th-century Māori visual art ‘add-ons’ to otherwise non-Māori places and spaces. The 21st-century spaces, enlivened and contextualised by the work of visual arts, are also different in nature to the total-concept designs produced by architects working from a tikanga Māori perspective.

The post-earthquake rebuild of Christchurch’s central business district opened up the opportunity to reindigenise public space and buildings using toi Māori. For example, Darryn George’s (Ngāpuhi) 2011 Lamb’s Book of Life (Folder Wall) mural was one of the largest, temporary Gap-Filler projects of this time, covering the multi-storey blank wall of the former Government Life Tower Building, left exposed after the removal of the St Elmo Courts building. Lonnie Hutchinson’s (Ngāi Tahu) 2017 Kahu Matarau is a sculptural reinterpretation of a kahu huruhuru (feather cloak) composed of aluminium kākāpō feathers, which permanently cloaks the Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct. Many of these Christchurch-based projects were developed by the Matapopore Trust, an entity established by Ngāi Tahu to work with civic organisations and embed Māori values and stories into the built landscape.

Contemporary Māori visual art has also been used to increase the visibility of te ao Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest city. Tāmaki Makaurau, meaning ‘Tāmaki desired by many’ because of its fertile soils and mild climate, has always been an attractive place to settle. Shane Cotton’s (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine, Te Uri Taniwha) 2020, five-storey-high mural Maunga on the side of Excelsior House in the CBD’s Britomart precinct was inspired by waves of migration into the city. The mural continues Cotton’s fascination with 19th-century Ringatū figurative painting, an art form developed for wharenui (meeting houses), through the repetition of pot and vase motifs across the wall. In Ringatū figurative painting, the pot is an allegory for the containment of Māori land. In Cotton’s mural, it represents the memories of former landscapes that migrants bring with them to new places.

Leading tohunga have, for some time, provided whakairo rākau for new public and educational buildings and, increasingly, conceptual design services to architects. The tohunga whakairo Bernard Makoare (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi-nuitonu, Ngāti Whātua) worked with FJMT architects and Archimedia for the Auckland Art Gallery restoration and expansion, and Archimedia again for Te Oro. Graham Tipene (Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Haua, Ngāti Manu), a tohunga tā moko (moko expert), has collaborated extensively with architects and urban designers; notable projects include Auckland City Mission Te Tāpui Atawhai’s HomeGround, with Stevens Lawson Architects (2022), and the installation in Auckland’s Myers Park, Waimahara (2023). They and other tohunga have a deep understanding of tikanga Māori and pūrakau (ancestral stories) that they can formalise into a range of media and spaces.

In my ‘Urban Māori Art and Architecture’ chapter, I discuss the role of sculpture in representing a Māori presence in cities, starting with Selwyn Muru’s (Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī, 1937–2024) 1990 Te Waharoa o Aotea. These city-based interventions have sometimes been highly controversial as their concepts and means of expression have confronted the public with the historical and contemporary challenges faced by Māori society in a way that architecture never could (yet, at least). This is apparent in the media criticism faced by Shona Rapira Davies (Ngāti Wai) for her 1992 Te Aro Park project in Wellington, which included additional artwork by my cousin, Kura Te Waru Rewiri (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu), and by Michael Parekowhai (Ngāriki Rotoawe, Ngāti Whakarongo) for his finely recreated 1950s’ weatherboard state house, The Lighthouse/Tū Whenua-a-Kura, which opened at Auckland’s Queens Wharf in 2017. Elsewhere in the book, I acknowledge the contribution of Māori designers, such as Johnson Witehira (Tamahaki, Ngāi Tū-te-auru) and Carin Wilson (Ngāti Awa, Tuhourangi), in extending their practices beyond the page and furniture to digital and hard landscaping.

Māori visual artists have also contributed to the indigenisation of buildings and urban hard landscapes through commissioned street art. Their art is rarely recognised academically, despite being highly accessible to the public through its location and formalism. Arising in the working-class suburbs of South and West Auckland and Wellington’s commuter belt, Māori street art has its roots in African-American activism, tagging, rap music and popular culture, which is probably why it has scared away most art and architectural historians. Yet, it is hard not to be impressed with the improvement to buildings and streetscapes by Graham Hoete (a.k.a. Mr. G; Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Awa), Taupuruariki Brightwell (Rongowhakaata, Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira) and Xoë Hall (Ngāi Tahu), and by the collaborative street art of Tame Iti (Ngāi Tūhoe) and Owen Dippie in Tāneatua, and Janine Williams (Ngāti Paoa, Ngāti Whātua ki Kaipara, Ngāti Mahuta) and Charles Williams (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāpuhi) across Aotearoa and the Pacific. If we can recognise a Shane Cotton mural on a building as architectural art, surely we can do so for these practitioners, too.

A new generation of Māori architectural designers is also revitalising practices that may have been considered the domain of Māori visual artists in previous decades and tohunga in earlier times. The impressive kōwhaiwhai pattern-like frit on TOA Architects’ 2022 Te Taumata o Kupe building, illustrating the journey of the ancestral navigator Kupe to Aotearoa New Zealand, was designed by Matekitātahi Rāwiri-McDonald (Te Whānau ā Apanui). His work was based on a visual language he created as part of his Master of Architecture (Professional) thesis, itself influenced by the art of his whanaunga Cliff Whiting and informed by the kōrero passed down to Rāwiri-McDonald by the tohunga Rereata Makiha (Ngāpuhi, Te Arawa, Rangitāne).

Some Māori architects and architectural designers have thriving art practices. Shane Cotton was originally a draftsperson before he became one of the country’s most acclaimed painters. Rachel Carley (Ngāpuhi) is a ceramicist and Raukura Turei (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngā Rauru Kītahi) a multidisciplinary artist; both are University of Auckland architecture graduates. A graduate from the Wellington School of Architecture, Te Ari Prendergast (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau ā Apanui), now a member of Warren and Mahoney’s Te Matakīrea design unit, is included in the contemporary Māori fashion design section of Toi Te Mana for his runway collections.

The relationship between Māori visual artists, tohunga and architectural designers/architects is not completely seamless and there is healthy debate across the practices about what a contribution to Māori architecture needs to be to have architectural and cultural integrity. The influential Ngā Aho Network of Māori Design Professionals was formed in 2001 as a professional body for the commercially oriented creative disciplines of architecture, design, engineering, landscape architecture and planning, as the needs of these practitioners were not being met by Māori visual arts organisations founded earlier, like Ngā Puna Waihanga, Te Waka Toi and Toi Māori Aotearoa. Perhaps the next phase of Māori architecture will be one where a common ground is found between the practitioners of the diverse toi Māori disciplines that are making their marks on Māori building design. Toi Te Mana is a step in that direction.

Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) is a Professor of Architecture at Te Pare School of Architecture and Planning, Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. She teaches, supervises and researches Māori architectural and art history, and Māori and Pacific housing. Brown was the recipient of Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects’ highest honour, the Gold Medal, earlier this year.