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HONONGA
“…from the tops of the trees to the roots of the earth.”
- Wurundjeri Elder, Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin, Welcome to Country
HONONGA is an interweaving of bloodlines carried across oceans, seeds scattered by wind, and kinship stretched across timelines. It is a crafting of cosmologies through the cycles of life and death - an act of restoring balance in our stories of place, identity, and belonging.
As a personal acknowledgment of Country, HONONGA grounds itself in a shared canopy of presence, culture, and care - anchoring community through ancestral ties.
No hea koe? Ahakoa he aha te rākau, me ngākau whakaute te whenua.
(Where are you from? No matter the tree, to cherish the land.)
Through carved objects, photography and storytelling, the exhibition unfolds as a cyclical timeline of migration - from the cosmos, moon, and oceans to land and soil, to the trees that carry our shared stories, and finally to the seeds that hold our individual journeys.
about the artist
Irihipeti Waretini is a multidisciplinary artist, cultural development and well-being practitioner. She curates living archives for Indigenous methodologies and ways of being, through various collaborations, creative ventures, movement and wellness-based practices including Carving Gang: a creative education collective that centers traditional Māori carving. Providing tools and spaces of learning for the self-determination of the very communities who have raised her and her daughter, Irihipeti brings light to dark spaces with conversations and repositories that weave contemporary and traditional Māori art, multimedia, performance art, photography, film and soundscapes.
Read more about Irihipeti’s work here
Insta: @irihipeti_waretini