Experience Cora-Allans’ latest exhibition featuring hiapo and whenua-pigments. Encountering Aotearoa is a deep dive into depictions of the whenua from the vantage point of the moana, and a response to a legacy of colonial mapping and recording practices. Inspired by her journey around Aotearoa’s coastline, the works explore themes of Pacific navigation, Māori-Pākehā encounters and cultural connections, blending personal and historical narratives.

The new exhibition at Te Kōngahu Museum of Waitangi Exhibition Gallery opens to the public from 23 November.

Artist Cora-Allan (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Tumutumu, Niue – Liku, Alofi) utilising whenua-pigment, hiapo (barkcloth) and other ngahere (forest) resources to showcase and encapsulate the ideas and techniques she has been developing in depth over recent years.

The conceptualisation of her recent works began though a series of small trips onto the moana. Every painting is constructed with a fresh palette of whenua paint and is guided by her sketches composed during these boat trips. These works introduced narratives from Pacific navigation and first encounters between Māori and Pākehā that would become integral themes of later works.

These concepts were further developed during a longer, two-week journey along the coastline of Aotearoa beginning in Te Waipounamu and ending in Te Tai Tokerau. Whilst on this journey, Cora-Allan and her pāpā, Kelly Lafaiki (Niue – Liku, Alofi) explored and recorded the shapes of the land from the viewpoint of the moana. He documented their journey within a notebook, full of written entries and hand-drawn pictures. Fellow artist Emily Parr (Ngāi TeRangi, Moana, Pākeha) captured these intimate interactions between father and daughter within two moving image works that sit alongside the exhibition.