Commentary

“When I think about moving image, I think its' whakapapa goes to performance. If you look at the elements of kapa haka there are some really great things to call on, to bring in. It’s storytelling. I've never been very interested in having video that hasn't had people in it neither.” - Rachael Rakena

In the third conversation from our four part series Uiuinga, Bridget Reweti meets Rachael Rakena. Commissioned by CIRCUIT and Toi Māori Aotearoa - Māori Arts New Zealand.

Commissioned by CIRCUIT and Toi Māori Aotearoa - Māori Arts New Zealand, Uiuinga is a four-part series in which Bridget Reweti interviews four Māori artists about their work in the moving image. In this conversation Robert Jahnke discusses his 1979 animated film Te Utu, which he made a student in California to "commemorate the importance of Rangi and Papa" and Cliff Whiting's mural Te Wehenga o Rangi rāua ko Papa (1969-76).

"Although university art galleries globally are no longer bound by traditional demands to be “teaching” facilities, how do we distinguish between what is ‘educational’ and what simply raises the profile of a campus? Have the lines between university art galleries and their civic counterparts become too blurred? Does it matter?" - Amy Weng

As From the Shore opens at Pataka in Wellington, we revisit curator Ioana Gordon-Smith's address to the 2018 CIRCUIT Symposium on the work of pioneering Māori film-makers Barry Barclay and Merata Mita, and their influence on contemporary practitioners now. For more texts and conversation around these artists, download our Symposium e-book here.