///\\\ OPENING EVENT///\\\
Saturday 4 october, 2pm
Exhibition dates: 4 - 26 October 2025
Te Koha depicts the story between Ngāpuhi and the British Empire before the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
These works are centred on hau– a Māori philosophical mechanism based on the ‘the breath of life’— which is an intrinsic aspect of exchange. As all life is shaped by hau, part of the donor's soul becomes entangled in the gift, and through its wish to return home, compels the recipient to make a return. Just as in our own society, there is often a pretence of pure generosity when one first gives a gift, though in reality, the receiver is expected to return something of equal or greater value later on. Hence a gift can often be a challenge, a form of checkmate, that is to say– you give to people because you assume they would do the same.
From Kings to Chiefs, nobles to missionaries, gifts initiated the encounters and relationships that shaped our colonial history. Te Koha shows that Māori have long been entangled in Australia’s colonial history— a brutal wound which spilled its way to Aotearoa. Through this, Te Koha makes the past readable again, where the interactions between Māori and Empire were shaped by conflicting forms of exchange. Unlike in today’s economy, hau has nothing to do with making a profit, or scoring a moral victory at anyone’s expense, it shows how the exchange of material achieves social integration. For Māori, it was the very glue that held society together— as agreements and contracts were made not to act in accord with one's economic self-interest.
Te Koha presents fragments of time, migration, power, resistance, and the dramatic intensity of human relations. How might this stand against history? And in what ways does it challenge what we believe about reciprocity?
ABOUT THE ARTIST
noa hāmana is a Ngāpuhi/ British interdisciplinary artist communicating 21st century Indigeneity. His practice draws on his knowledge of Māori arts, anthropology, and literary devices to create a unique cultural vocabulary through world-building and storytelling. Ancestral narratives run a thread where space and time folds, cultural figures, forms, patterns, and motifs fuse with his own cultural context and personal experience. Born in Ōtautahi, Christchurch, his work explores and critiques different facets of colonialism, such as its religious and economic theories, and their continued effects of deprivation. Noa’s art communicates the phenomena of time through mythical, and sometimes religious interpretations of the archaic, where history becomes readable again. In doing so, noa dives for the deepest fish of the sea, loosening the tangle at the bottom of the net.