Essays

Essays on art, indigeneity, te ao Māori, te taiao, the politics of perception and many a lonely, hair-raising, paradigm-crossing foray to the contact zone. It's a culture jam. (For essays published in books, see under Books.)

Te tuna-whiri: the knot of eels (Spanish)

On Māori art, hau and how our taonga travel, looking at works by Terri te Tau and Bridget Reweti. Translated for Post(s) 8, December 2022.

Wave, whip, rise, roar

2020

On the contemporary woven art of wahine Māori collective Mata Aho. The Spinoff, 20 June 2020.

Taniwha in the room II

2020

On flying to Tāmaki as a pandemic was hitting, for the group show Speaking Surfaces and an affiliated healing wānanga by Jack Gray, at St Paul St Gallery. Pantograph Punch. August 2020.

Taniwha in the room I

2020

On flying to Tāmaki as a pandemic was hitting, for the group show Speaking Surfaces and an affiliated healing wānanga by Jack Gray, at St Paul St Gallery. Pantograph Punch. August 2020.

Listen your way home

2019

On Rachael Shearer’s majestic sound artwork ‘Te Oro o Te Ao’. Ate Journal of Contemporary Māori Art 1. June 2019.

Documents alive

On John Miller’s protest photographs (and a protest-adjacent childhood) for South as a State of Mind 9 (Documenta 14 #4).

It burns

2018

On Jasmine Togo-Brisby’s Colonial Sugar exhibition, City Gallery Wellington’s Occulture, and the handling of indigenous spiritualities in a public gallery. Counterfutures 5. June 2018.

Being still of a roving disposition, or, De-seeing: a polemic

2016

On John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea and Bridget Reweti’s Tirohanga. Invited talk, CoCA Centre of Contemporary Art, Ōtautahi Christchurch, 25 June 2016. Under revision.

Strange land singing

2015

A sneaking glance at the early video works of Bridget Reweti. Aotearoa Digital Arts (ADA) Network. December 2015.

Kei roto i te whare: on housing

2015

On dwelling in, and traversing, multiple cultural worlds. This paper travels between te ao Māori and European philosophies of difference, with art by Sasha Huber, Deane-Rose Ngatai and Lisa Reihana. St Paul St Curatorial Symposium 2015, St Paul St Gallery and AUT, Auckland, 2015.

What you see you don’t see: Lisa Reihana’s Digital Marae

2011

A close conceptual reading of the ways Reihana uses multiple audiovisual media to recreate an immanent, affective marae experience for the far-from-home Māori viewer. World Art 1. February 2012.