Raise the anchor, unfurl the sails, set course to the centre of an ever setting sun! by Nathan Pohio for SCAPE 8

[image caption] Nathan Pohio Raise the anchor, unfurl the sails, set course to the centre of an ever setting sun! 2015. Commissioned by SCAPE Public Art. Image courtesy of the artist and Jonathan Smart Gallery, Christchurch. Photo by Hannah Watkinson.

Nathan Pohio lives and works in Ōtautahi. His moving-image works draw on a variety of photographic and cinematic practices. In his work, Raise the anchor, unfurl the sails, set course to the centre of an ever setting sun!, Pohio cropped an image sourced from a 1905 edition of the Canterbury times, which depicts Māori leaders on horseback in full ceremonial dress, korowai and kākahu (cloaks), flanking Lord and Lady Plunket in their motorcar on a visit to Kaiapoi. The tight crop around the subjects is reminiscent of heroic line-ups of characters from early popular cinema, particularly the poster for Magnificent Seven (1960) directed by John Sturges, a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film, Seven Samurai. This iconic film inspired generations of film-makers, and although Pohio’s image predates the famous western poster by some 50 years, his re-presentation of it uses similar cinematic language. Illuminated at a grand scale and a proportion approximating Panavision for SCAPE 8: New Intimacies, the 110-year-old image reads like a billboard for the latest blockbuster. Sited in the Park of Remembrance, it offers acknowledgement of the histories of Ōtautahi Christchurch and the meetings of cultures alongside the Ōtākaro Avon River. It offers the viewer a chance to imagine the narratives of these characters and what these stories mean for a city currently reimagining itself.