Hemi Macgregor: Waiora and the web of life

When Māori talk about the water, the stars and the land, we’re talking about ourselves. We don’t delineate between these elements and us. This is the essence of all my work as an artist and of my exhibition Waiora at Pātaka in Porirua. I’m looking at the positive impacts of these connections; of being both in and part of the environment.

The exhibition’s name comes from Tāne-te-waiora, the Māori deity of forest and birds, which is implicitly linked to kaitiakitanga (guardianship) and the environment’s role in contributing to wellbeing, hauora. Tāne-te-waiora can also mean sunlight, and it talks about the external factors that affect us as humans. I’ve done a lot of research around different genealogies and Māori narratives, purakau. Years ago, I studied under Māori artist Bob Jahnke, looking at what is literally being said in purakau, as well as their subtle messages that influence our shared understandings.

Artists are always filtering ideas, and Māori understand that we’re embedded in the broad concepts of our stories; that there’s a sense of the repercussions from our actions – a reciprocity between us and the environment. We can’t keep making economic decisions that ignore the environmental ones. What are we prepared to do to take care of the earth? I teach at Massey University and my contribution to the design and development of Te Rau Karamu Marae further developed my interest in our narratives. I left a lot of knowledge in that house, but I took with me a better process of understanding whakapapa.

Artists also become part of our own stories, especially when our work is presented again and again in a different venue and in different forms. The team at Pātaka has installed and lit Waiora so that it’s more of an experience than a traditional exhibition of paintings hung on a white wall. It’s displayed in a dark room that makes the spaces feel bigger than they actually are and gives the impression that the artworks are floating. The walls feel deconstructed, allowing the visitor to truly experience the exhibition. The positive and negative spaces are given equal weighting, for example when viewing the work’s Te Po Tangotango and Wanui-atea that sit on opposite walls in the gallery, it’s the space in between the two artworks that’s most important. There’s a real dynamism to the iteration of my show at Pātaka, which I really like.

Sometimes we’re in a rush to know the meaning of an artwork at a really complex level. My work doesn’t deliver literal answers; it provides an experience that requires the viewer to slow down and get just a small glimmer of the story that sits behind the art. I work with the fundamental elements: dirt water and air. In the stories, these elements start crossing over each other, and that’s where the complexity occurs.

I was lucky as a child to be brought up in a family that valued creativity and working with your hands. My sister is also an artist, and Mum was a reo teacher and weaver. On my father’s side, they were practical people, like engineers! I reckon both art and engineering are about wanting to solve problems, and I was always exposed to an experience of life through practise. When mum was travelling to teach on marae, I’d go with her up and down the west coast of the lower North Island. Having the space and time to create something on a marae was so valuable. I was young but already understood the power of art to broaden your mind.