Art restores cultural & environmental relationships

AWA (Artists for Waiapu Action), Aotearoa New Zealand est. 2023 / He Uru Mānuka, He Uru Kānuka 2024, installation view ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ 2024 / Courtesy: The artists, Radio Ngāti Porou and Te Amokura Productions / This project was assisted by Radio Ngāti Porou, Te Amokura Productions, Australia’s Mānuka, Just Thinking Out Loud, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongerewa, Ngā Pae o Maramatanga (New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence), Creative New Zealand, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau / AUT University, Waipapa Taumata Rau / University of Auckland, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Raukūmara Pae Maunga and The students of Ngata Memorial College / Photograph: N Umek © QAGOMA

AWA (Artists for Waiapu Action), Aotearoa New Zealand est. 2023 / He Uru Mānuka, He Uru Kānuka 2024, installation view ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ 2024 / Courtesy: The artists, Radio Ngāti Porou and Te Amokura Productions / This project was assisted by Radio Ngāti Porou, Te Amokura Productions, Australia’s Mānuka, Just Thinking Out Loud, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongerewa, Ngā Pae o Maramatanga (New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence), Creative New Zealand, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau / AUT University, Waipapa Taumata Rau / University of Auckland, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Raukūmara Pae Maunga and The students of Ngata Memorial College / Photograph: N Umek © QAGOMA / View full image

Aotearoa New Zealand's Artists for Waiapu Action — shortened to AWA — which means ‘river’ in Te Reo Māori — is a collaboration between photographer Natalie Robertson and tohunga taiao restoration ecologist Graeme Atkins. They share whakapapa (genealogy) to Ngāti Pōkai people, and seek to use art to restore cultural and environmental relationships with their ancestral Waiapu River.

In their project, He Uru Mānuka, He Uru Kānuka 2024, installed in eleventh Asia Pacific Triennial, AWA retrieve indigenous ecological knowledge from museum archives to revive the practice of building stone fish traps, known as pā tauremu, to re-story a relationship with the Waiapu. Joining the pair, Lionel Matenga — a tohunga whakairo (skilled carver) and net weaver — replicated a 4.5-metre kūpenga (fishing net) documented in a journal written in 1923. In 2023 and 2024, this kūpenga was attached to a pā tauremu using the stakes and brushwood of kānuka and mānuka trees in the Waiapu as AWA, along with community members, attempted in vain to catch fish in the sediment-laden river.

AWA (Artists for Waiapu Action), Aotearoa New Zealand est. 2023 / He Uru Mānuka, He Uru Kānuka 2024, installation view ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ 2024 / Courtesy: The artists, Radio Ngāti Porou and Te Amokura Productions / This project was assisted by Radio Ngāti Porou, Te Amokura Productions, Australia’s Mānuka, Just Thinking Out Loud, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongerewa, Ngā Pae o Maramatanga (New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence), Creative New Zealand, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau / AUT University, Waipapa Taumata Rau / University of Auckland, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Raukūmara Pae Maunga and The students of Ngata Memorial College / Photograph: C Callistemon © QAGOMA

AWA (Artists for Waiapu Action), Aotearoa New Zealand est. 2023 / He Uru Mānuka, He Uru Kānuka 2024, installation view ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ 2024 / Courtesy: The artists, Radio Ngāti Porou and Te Amokura Productions / This project was assisted by Radio Ngāti Porou, Te Amokura Productions, Australia’s Mānuka, Just Thinking Out Loud, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongerewa, Ngā Pae o Maramatanga (New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence), Creative New Zealand, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau / AUT University, Waipapa Taumata Rau / University of Auckland, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Raukūmara Pae Maunga and The students of Ngata Memorial College / Photograph: C Callistemon © QAGOMA / View full image

AWA (Artists for Waiapu Action), Aotearoa New Zealand est. 2023 / He Uru Mānuka, He Uru Kānuka 2024, installation view ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ 2024 / Courtesy: The artists, Radio Ngāti Porou and Te Amokura Productions / This project was assisted by Radio Ngāti Porou, Te Amokura Productions, Australia’s Mānuka, Just Thinking Out Loud, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongerewa, Ngā Pae o Maramatanga (New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence), Creative New Zealand, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau / AUT University, Waipapa Taumata Rau / University of Auckland, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Raukūmara Pae Maunga and The students of Ngata Memorial College / Photograph: N Umek © QAGOMA

AWA (Artists for Waiapu Action), Aotearoa New Zealand est. 2023 / He Uru Mānuka, He Uru Kānuka 2024, installation view ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ 2024 / Courtesy: The artists, Radio Ngāti Porou and Te Amokura Productions / This project was assisted by Radio Ngāti Porou, Te Amokura Productions, Australia’s Mānuka, Just Thinking Out Loud, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongerewa, Ngā Pae o Maramatanga (New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence), Creative New Zealand, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau / AUT University, Waipapa Taumata Rau / University of Auckland, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Raukūmara Pae Maunga and The students of Ngata Memorial College / Photograph: N Umek © QAGOMA / View full image

Watch | AWA discuss their project

Watch | Installation time-lapse

A life-sized replica of these fishing technologies forms the centre of AWA’s installation for the Asia Pacific Triennial. Photographs by Robertson, along with an accompanying website, locate the geographical context with Waiapu cultural histories co-authored with Abraham Karaka. An underwater video recorded by Alex Monteith, with an immersive soundtrack by Maree Sheehan, poetically transports audiences into the space of belonging, culture and community cohesion, albeit within a devastated river environment.

In Robertson’s words: We are a weaving, cord-making, net-making, fishing people. This is our heritage. We reiterate the value of enacting cultural survival and revival every time a net is put out into the river.

This project was assisted by Radio Ngāti Porou, Te Amokura Productions, Australia’s Mānuka, Just Thinking Out Loud, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongerewa, Ngā Pae o Maramatanga (New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence), Creative New Zealand, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau / AUT University, Waipapa Taumata Rau / University of Auckland, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Raukūmara Pae Maunga and The students of Ngata Memorial College.

Edited extract from the publication The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, 2024

Asia Pacific Triennial
30 November 2024 – 27 April 2025
Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)
Brisbane, Australia
Free entry

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