Te Papa recently broke the seal on their vaults, giving life to their extensive – but long concealed – collection of New Zealand art. MARK AMERY reviews Toi Te Papa: Art of the Nation.


ALTERATIONS were made at the heart of our national museum Te Papa Tongarewa late last year. They provide symbolic shifts; responses to criticism of the museum’s treatment of its art collection; and better acknowledgement of the museum’s history and resources.

The first is a major addition to the building’s physical centre. VOID is a site-specific work from senior artists Bill Culbert and Ralph Hotere. In classic Culbert/Hotere style it’s expressive of the powerful poetic potential when, amongst life’s clutter, darkness is poured into a light-ringed vessel.

Physically VOID comprises of two large black rubber discs, the first ringed by white neon and stainless steel set into the floor of level two, and the second high above in the ceiling of level six, bisected by a neon line. Five levels are connected by an invisible shaft, acting like a resonator between two rubber plates. A core is asserted within a building that has been criticised for its lack of clear central axes.

The work is a relation of Culbert and Hotere’s FAULT, running across the facade of the City Gallery building. FAULT like VOID is a strong, cool architectural intervention. Navigation lights that indicated the capital’s former public library was now a site for art and its dismantling of received knowledge.

Looking up from within VOID’s disc on level two, surrounded by the museum’s opening flashing fun fair lights, there’s a space created here for clarity in visual language; a clearing for calm within the cacophony. Whilst from above the bottom disc appears like a bottomless hole, channelling the building to the earth, from below it provides impetus upwards, spiralling towards the cut circle in the barrelled roof. It’s a teleport to the top floor – an arrow pointing towards the national art collection, now on permanent display.


Within Toi Te Papa: Art of the Nation there are symbolic additions at the centre. Out of storage have come the original 1849 maihi (bargeboards) for the significant wharenui Te Hau ki Turanga. The whare was a centrepiece of the old Buckle Street museum with replacement maihi carved by the museum’s carver. It is now an important part of Te Papa’s permanent Mana Whenua exhibition. The original maihi display a beautiful early example of painted kowhaiwhai, a development that came with the arrival of the European.

Exhibited alongside the maihi are the tukutuku panels woven for the wharenui’s installation in the Dominion Musuem in 1936. A number of these tukutuku panels used the poutama pattern, symbolising upward movement. They recall the way VOID operates within the museum space.

Also at the exhibition’s centre is Colin McCahon’s ‘Northland Panels’, marked for its cluttered exhibition downstairs when Te Papa opened. Not only is there now not a Kelvinator fridge in sight, but there’s enough white space on either side to swing an apology.

Toi Te Papa cannot hope to make up for our loss of a national art gallery when Te Papa was created. Strong signage, lighting and artwork placement will also never make up for the feeling that its housed in the building’s attic. However, after years of bagging, it’s a relief to be able to report on the excellent job completed by Te Papa’s curatorial team on this exhibition. A solid engaging job is made of providing a clear chronological journey through our art history; an illustration of how much better we can understand ourselves through our art.

Well laid out in the available space, the works are grouped into sections under themes that couldn’t really be any broader (‘About Now’ runs one title). These do however provide strong structural brackets, nicely coloured in by strong mini-groupings that tease out some key art historical themes and examine different genre.


As symbolised by the maihi at the centre, a key strength is the way our bicultural strands are brought together, starting with a ‘Beginnings’ section that briefly articulates how our traditions have woven into the contemporary. From works dating back to the 12th century through to the Dominion Museum’s tukutuku, Maori artefacts are accorded fine art status history till recently denied them. Michael Dunn considered traditional Maori sculpture outside the scope of his 2002 history New Zealand Sculpture because of its “distinct identity”. Toi Te Papa provides stunning examples of how central contact between the two cultures has been to the evolution of work by both Maori and European artists.

There are treasures aplenty out of storage here. Reunions with old friends, like Rita Angus’s jewel-like ‘Central Otago’, with its the audacious surreal collapsing together of views. Rewarding new meetings, like Julian Dashper’s ‘Purple Rain at Glorit’, a gorgeously garish meditation on New Zealand regionalism and mid ‘80s art and culture.

There is strong, intelligent curation throughout. Take the small and informative section on early abstraction entitled “You want landscapes?” (“Take a drive in the country,” goes the rest of the quip from abstractionist Milan Mrkusich). The cool cubist window-like refractions of McCahon’s bush and sea landscape ‘French Bay’ sings beautifully paired with the pushy staccato rhythms of Mrkusich’s ‘Buildings’, the urban nightscape of lights as seen in a puddle. Then comes a lesser known gem for a coda: Douglas MacDiarmid’s ‘Point Halswell, Wellington’, the landmark explored through origami-like geometrical reflections and refractions.

What’s present from the collection highlights what is absent. Sensibly, two gallery areas are devoted to changing exhibitions: an annually changing focus on art from the 1930s to the 1970s, and an exhibition of contemporary work changing half-yearly. It’d be nice to see some non-chronological and less predictable conversations across the collection as well. This first full incarnation of Toi Te Papa provides a strong opening statement.

Toi Te Papa: Art of the Nation, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.