All This Work Is Necessary

The wetlands in Hauraki have been irrevocably altered from their pre-colonial state. Once, the swamp land was rich with resources, including endemic species of plants, fish and birds. Māori cherished this taonga that provided mahinga kai, rongoā and materials for raranga and whakairo. Wetlands function as a boundary between land and water, filtering excess sediment and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. During European settlement, timber millers were attracted to the land due to kahikatea and soon felled the forest. Plans were then made to drain the swamp and convert the land into space for dairy farming. Throughout this process, carefully crafted legislation such as the Native Land Court was “designed for Pākehā purposes of freeing up Māori land from collective ownership and making it available to individual settlers.”

 Mana whenua were alienated from their own rohe and thrust into survival mode. Taupaki acknowledges this and seeks to “restore the mana lost” from an Ngāti Hako perspective. She has previously stated that being in her tūrangawaewae begets a sense of wātea—wā meaning time and ātea referring to a communal space. With her own hand-written notes overlaid atop copies of archival material spanning a period of 200 years, Taupaki deconstructs the Western concept of time as linear. Other Māori artists and historians have described time in te ao Māori as “multidimensional” or as a “spiral”. Following their lead, Taupaki dismantles the colonial narratives that aided in Ngāti Hako land loss. In reaching back to the ‘time’ of her tūpuna and bringing it forth, Taupaki collapses the centuries between generations. 

Renown scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith asserts that

The relationship between land, waters, trees, rocks, animals, birds, fish, insects and other things and humans is deeply embedded in language, stories, values, ethics and social institutions. This is a completely different concept than ascribing human characteristics on to animals and plants. It is not about humanizing the non-human but recognizing the agency of non-human entities for their own characteristics.

Taupaki uses whenua collected from her awa—Waihou—to weigh down the stacks of paper in this exhibition. Waihou is a living entity that has been historically degraded through the Mining Act of 1891, another piece of legislation that Taupaki riffs off of. The land and awa have been exploited by these Acts, with long-lasting effects for the uri of Ngāti Hako who espouse the whakataukī ko au te awa, ko awa te au. I am the river, the river is me. 

In the past, Taupaki’s research has been the backbone of her exhibitions; integral, yet often unseen. Here, she lets the research become the exhibition. Taupaki’s time spent in libraries and archives reading, scanning, highlighting and annotating are reflected in the fifty sets of four layered drawings placed in the gallery. Three sizable mind maps unfurl from the ceiling, a large-scale representation of the artist’s documentation on display. This exhibition is the culmination of years of mahi tahi. A residency at Te Whare Hera in 2022 allowed the artist to spend time in Archives New Zealand, providing a starting point for a project focused on the use of language as a colonial weapon that perpetuates violence against Māori. While in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Taupaki also exhibited with Jhana Millers Gallery in a show concerned with fostering a connection to te taiao through the use of local natural materials.

Wānanga and fieldwork play an imperative role in Taupaki’s work. She has engaged with mana whenua in recent public programmes in Tāmaki Makaurau with Samoa House Library and in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa with HOEA! As a part of this exhibition, Taupaki will lead a community workshop to foster relationality and reciprocity. Enjoy is proud to present All This Work Is Necessary during this period of time in Aotearoa. 

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL EXHIBITION TEXT