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An exhibition featuring the quilting of Ngāti Porou artist Maungarongo (Ron) Te Kawa has arrived at Tairāwhiti Museum, marking the final stop on a three-year global journey.

Te Whare Pora: A Sacred Space explores mātauranga Māori and Te Kawa’s whakapapa through quilted works of vibrant colours and textiles manipulated in his unique way.

He is excited to be home after being based in places across New Zealand and the world for the last three years. 

Te Kawa last year spent three months in Norway and the Arctic Circle where he ran workshops and took Te Whare Pora to the Nitja Centre for Contemporary Arts in Lillestrøm and Sami Art Gallery in Karasjok.

“I’m trying not to have any expectations about it coming to Gisborne because it does mean a little bit more because it’s from where I am from, where my parents are from,” he said of the exhibition.

Te Kawa, 55, was born in the old Cook Hospital. His father is from Tikapa (north of Ruatōria) and his mother was raised in Mangapapa in Gisborne.

Te Kawa has two sisters who have lived in Gisborne their whole lives, and he often comes home to visit and reconnect with whānau.

The exhibition started off as all new work but has turned into a kind of retrospective.

“I made some of the works way before lockdown and the stories have changed, so I am really sad it’s coming to an end, but I am happy to be able to tell new stories and redefine it,” he said.

The exhibition is about uplifting his people.

“It’s not all happy and a bed of roses. There’s a lot of pain as well, but I have to represent my people as beautifully as I can on their best day.

“When growing up we didn’t see positive pictures of ourselves. It wasn’t until now, with the Kotahitanga movement growing, that we are seeing positive images of ourselves.

“I am not interested in anything negative. I always try to use our people as a vision board for beauty, strength, wairua, music...all the things special to us.”

Te Kawa began his career making clothes in the retail industry.

However, as a teenager he wanted to pursue art and had an exhibition at a gallery in Wellington.

“The gallery owners hated it,” he said.

“It was all about racism. It was the 80s and they didn’t want to see it, so they hung black cloths all over it and blocked it out and closed it down.

“I knew it wasn’t safe for me to be an artist, so I decided to move to Australia and start a clothes shop.”

Te Kawa opened a shop called Pretty On the Inside in Canberra and made clothes for a living.

He moved back to New Zealand in 1999 and opened a shop called It’s Too Early For That Dress before working at the Christchurch Arts Centre from 2003 to 2011.

He recalled the 2005 election featuring National Party race-focused billboards about “iwi/Kiwi” and the “one law for all” policy driven by National.

Te Kawa said, in his opinion, it was an ugly time that created division.

He remembers Māori women visiting his shop and sharing with him about working in a situation where they didn’t feel safe as Māori and wanting to wear something that connected to their pepeha or whakapapa.

“At that time there weren’t a lot of clothes for Māori. There were only a few of us trained as fashion designers. It wasn’t like what it is now with different Māori fashion boutiques across the country.”

His clothes-making started to evolve into quilting, which in turn began a new journey into the art world.

“The quilts are a metaphor for wrapping people in their story that came from the call - the karanga - of what the people wanted.

“It wasn’t a conscious decision. It felt like I was being shoulder-tapped by my tipuna.”

Once he decided he was going to do quilting full time, he gave himself 10 years to learn while making mistakes.

Te Kawa retained his customers from the fashion industry. Difference was, they were now buying art.

“That gave me the time to keep learning with each order. It was a new trip to learn, and a challenge. I have got to the point where I have invented my own way of doing it.”

Te Kawa’s practice is underpinned by three pou (pillars) - Te Whare Pora, the sacred zone of making; Hineteiwaiwa, the guiding atua for creativity; and Waipunarangi, the source of ancestral guidance and inspiration.

He shares these pou in workshops where he teaches people what he does and why he does it.

Those principles, he said, were gifted to him and had sustained and helped him to thrive.

The latest exhibition has been curated by Zoe Black and designed by Turumeke Harrington.

Te Whare Pora: A Sacred Space is supported by Norwegian Crafts and Creative New Zealand and was developed by Objectspace.

It opens at Tairāwhiti Museum on Friday at 5.30pm and runs to February 23.

Matai O’Connor, Ngāti Porou, has been a journalist for five years and Kaupapa Māori reporter at the Gisborne Herald for two years.