6:2:1840
Nikau Hinden 2019
6:2:1840
Kokowai (burnt red ochre) and ngarahu (ash) on aute .
Purchased March 2020 from the Tim Melville Gallery, Auckland, for $8000, unframed.
Wooden frame dimensions: 1220mm x 700mm. Conservation glass.
Buying group: Christine Druce, Roz Palmer, Tim Druce, Ken Horner
Nikau Hinden (Te Rarawa, Ngapuhi)
BA/ BFA (Hons) University of Auckland
University of Hawaii (studied fine arts and Hawaiian studies).
Gisborne based.
Making the aute
Nikau returned to NZ from Hawaii in 2014, determined to revive the lost art of Maori aute making. Aute (paper mulberry) is known throughout the Pacific as tapa, kapa, masi, and haipo.
Submitted a proposal to Auckland Museum and received the inaugural Sir Hugh Kawharu scholarship (2015) to help her research the growing and production of aute. “Not much is known about aute in Aoteoroa except for traces found in our language and some old stories.” The practice of aute died out from 1840 as other materials became available.
Research proved difficult. Aute was brought to Aoteoroa from Hawaii by the master gardener, Whakaotirangi who is linked to both Te Rarawa and Tainui waka. Although it grows in NZ, aute has not thrived as it has in warmer climates.
There are 15 Maori aute beaters in NZ museums that gave her clues as to how Maori processed the bark. Using their shapes as a reference, and by using traditional methods, Nikau began making her own tools based on their shapes, using traditional methods. For example, she uses haonga (sandstone) to grind the beaters and she uses sharks’ teeth to carve grooves on the surface. She peels the tree bark and beats the sap to expand the fibres. It is then dried and soaked, laid on a wooden anvil, and slowly beaten into wide strips and worked into a sheet.
“Before I moved home from Hawaii I harvested a lot of aute on the island of Maui…I brought it back dried so I can re-soak it, beat it, then eventually paint it.”
“It takes such a long time to make the bark cloth I think I should take an equal amount of time to paint on it so I am very careful and precise with my marks. It’s a labour of love. “
Her practice
“I get attached to every piece… The process of making star maps is a way to study the stars from where they rise on the horizon and during what season.”
The painted ‘star maps’ are a visual language derived from the predetermined times the stars rise and set. “This is the language our ancestors used to navigate to Aoteoroa”.
From the signage at the Maritime Museum exhibition: Hinden uses the star compass to derive where she will mark the aute to create map. Navigators used the kapehu whetu (star compass) to memorise the locations of about 220 stars. It is a tool used not only to find direction but to calculate distance, time, swells and altitude.
Hinden’s vertical lines are star paths rising from star houses, for example on the eastern quadrants, tokerau and marangai. Using pigments such as kokowai (burnt red ochre) and ngarahu (ash), Hinden paints the star houses in red and black triangles below the horizon.
18th C European navigators also observed celestial bodies . eg Cook was despatched to the Pacific by the Royal Society of London to witness the Transit of Venus over Tahiti. To navigate he used an octant that measured the altitude of the sun, usually at noon, or a prominent star at night.
From the Australian Art News magazine –
“I first met Nikau Hinden at the Auckland Art Fair 2019 and had an immediate sense that she was destined to be a star. It is fitting then that her iconography centres on indigenous celestial navigation.”
She paints geometric star compasses on these unique surfaces using awe (soot) and earthen pigments. These star maps reference the celestial navigation used by her ancestors journey to Aoteoroa- a practise also being rejuvenated. Hinden’s work transmits this ancestral knowledge to new generations of Maori and others, alongside exchange with customary art. Her assertion of the role of customary practices in contemporary art provides an authentic means of revitalising both.”
Awards and Exhibitions
Coming up:
- Corban Estate Arts Centre October 2020
- Dowse Gallery June 2020 – Kokorangi ki Kokowai – will be about bringing celestial bodies into the physical and documenting the movement of the stars to find direction (star navigation) and cues for monthly cycles. “Our months are named after monthly stars through my star maps…. I’m trying to document and understand this better. The Gregorian calendar is an imposed system of time that has limited our ability to read tohu (signs) in our environment. This isolation period [ie Covis19 lockdown] has been an opportunity for people to experience time in a different way: the art of observation is really under-rated”. (NZ Herald May 2020)
Up to now:
- Recipient of the 2020 the Doreen Blumhardt Foundation’s Dame Doreen gift – “Nikau is an outstanding maker whose practice, research, and revival of aute… is of great importance to NZ. She’s a star, just as many of her works relate to the constellations as a fundamental source of traditional knowledge.”
2020 Release of the Stars – a group exhibition of Maori Artists spanning generations – Tim Melville Gallery Auckland
2020 Takiri: Unfurling at the Maritime Museum Auckland
2019 Names Held in our Mouths – Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery
2019 Commissioned to create a work for the cover of Crafting Aoteoroa
2019 exhibited at the Auckland Art Fair
Te Rangi Haupapa – A woven History at the Tauranga Art Gallery.
Koloa: Women Art and Technology at the Para Site Gallery in Hong Kong
Speaking Surfaces at St Paul Street Gallery Auckland
Several of her works have been purchases by the Auckland Art Gallery.
ARTICHOKE art group 