Return home Tūī, let your song remind us of histories unseen, by Martin Awa Clarke Langdon for SCAPE Public Art Season 2020
IMAGE: Martin Awa Clarke Langdon, Return home Tūī, let your song remind us of histories unseen, 2020. Image courtesy of Martin Awa Clarke Langdon and SCAPE Public Art.
ABOUT THE ARTWORK
Drawing on his own whakapapa as Kāi Tahu, Tainui, and Pākeha, Martin Awa Clarke Langdon’s work explores the bicultural foundations and contemporary lived experiences of Aotearoa New Zealand to open up “a third space of conversation”. In doing this, Langdon seeks to reveal hidden and unseen histories. Return home Tūī, let your song remind us of histories unseen draws on three distinct but interwoven kaupapa: contemporary sustainability in an era of rebuilding in Ōtautahi Christchurch; the reflection on cultural practices and sites of mahinga kai (sites that provide food and other resources); and colonial inter-cultural dynamics and relationships during the early 20th Century.
Return home Tūī, let your song remind us of histories unseen can be seen as a response, and a challenge to, the events that took place in 1906 to 1907 when Ōtautahi played host to the New Zealand International Exhibition, a World’s Fair type of event, where a vast village of buildings and infrastructure was built in Hagley Park to host over two million visitors from around the world. The exhibition included a staged Māori Pā, constructed to host and entertain international dignitaries. Named “Te Araiteuru”, the organisation of the pā was largely led by European ethnologists and its creation, occupation, and naming were enacted by predominantly non-Ngāi Tahu Māori. The name, which references significant Ngāi Tahu waka (boat, vessel) and histories in the more southern part of Te Waipounamu conflicts with the placement and occupancy of the pā. Through his work, which occupies space and creates a new spatial dynamic, Langdon highlights the parallel histories occurring at an already troubling time for Ngāi Tahu who were petitioning the government for access to crucial areas of land and mahinga kai after a number of broken promises and agreements. The response from the government was the South Island Landless Natives Act (1906), which granted Ngāi Tahu a small portion of isolated and largely unusable land ill-suited to self-sustaining practices.
Return home Tūī, let your song remind us of histories unseen consists of modified scaffold and a modular tī kōuka (cabbage tree), constructed from a repeating 3D-printed section scanned by Langdon. The tī kōuka holds a hand-made whare manu (bird house), which resembles a raised pātaka (storehouse). These contrasting architectural styles and materials are emblematic of a city of contrast: a tough and dominant colonial past mixed with a resilient, innovative, and enduring cultural future. The whare manu symbolically encourages the return of birdlife back into the urban centre and recalls a time when parts of Ōtautahi’s city centre were crucial mahinga kai locations and home to important flora and fauna.