Welcome to Mana Taonga, which focuses on Māori visual art from Te Pō/The Night to our arrival from the Pacific c.800 to the present day. It examines how artists critically negotiated current notions of identity in their work, and respond to new presences and influences in our community, including Christianity, colonialism, new materials and ideas.
Forms including moko, carving, weaving, architecture, film, contemporary art are explored through key ideas such as gender politics, patronage and repatriation. Artists examined include Raharuhi Rukupo, Te Kooti, Pine Taiapa, Lisa Reihana and Ralph Hotere. We consider the ongoing effects of colonisation and globalisation in relation to the collection and display of our art.
A core part of the course is to escape from the classroom into other environments to experience our taonga: Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland War Memorial Museum and of course the wonderful Tāne Nui a Rangi which is our university's meeting house on Wynyard Street.
The course is not just about the taonga and artists themselves, but also looks into ways in which we can think about them and how they have been written about through time, both orally and in text.
This course will build on skills you have learnt at Stage I and so by the end of the course you will be more culturally aware of the history and significance of Māori art.
Mana Taonga can supplement a suite of Māori- and indigenous-focused papers in the Faculty of Arts, including in History and Māori Studies.