“It is a peculiar thing,” Matariki Williams (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Hauiti, Taranaki, Ngāti Whakaue, Te Atihaunui-a-Pāpārangi) tells me over the phone. On Monday the first episode of her new, and first, podcast, Pūtātara: Revolutions in Māori Art, was released, and I’ve asked what it’s like to cover art in a medium that doesn’t have a visual element. Much of her public-facing career has been as a writer, where words are almost always accompanied by images – for example in the illustrated book Protest Tautohetohe: Objects of Resistance, Persistence and Defiance – and as a curator at Te Papa Tongarewa, where objects and artworks are put on display, to be seen. Images of artworks have been slotted sideways into the podcast – in the episode thumbnails, in a set of postcards given out at launches and on their way to galleries around the country, and in a photo-essay published on RNZ. There are also moments where art is described by interviewees or Williams, but in general the podcast is not too concerned with the appearances of things.
Pūtātara is instead focused on the historical and social context with which toi Māori has been enmeshed since the 1970s. “I’m always going to include social history in any sort of podcast about art because I think you can't divorce the two,” says Williams. The series begins in 1973, at the landmark Ngā Puna Waihanga hui at Te Kaha marae, set in a typical tiny settlement on the East Cape. It’s an “unlikely scene for a revolution,” says Williams, but that gathering set off a chain reaction of connections, moments, and movements that have driven Māori art since. The podcast follows this trajectory up to the present day, covering key moments, checking in with artists who were involved over the decades, and doing a little bit of “course correcting”. It took Williams and producer Jamie Tahana about a year of slowly chipping away – reading, listening to archives, tracking down interviewees, consulting an advisory board – to map out the six 40-minute episodes.
To access the historical moments, Pūtātara makes use of archival audio clips – Hone Tuwhare reading poetry, Robert Muldoon speaking at Waitangi, Whina Cooper questioning Pākehā systems – from Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision and Radio New Zealand. “The beauty of the archive audio is that it's actually what people want to listen to,” says Williams, “they want to hear these historical voices, not me trying to overexplain everything as I would in a written form”. In the script documents, her paragraphs became mere sentences. “So much fluff is cut out,” she says. “I would spend a really long time trying to write just one sentence”.
But using archives comes with challenges. They’re imperfect, incomplete, and only archive what was recorded. “There are quite a few major figures who there isn't any archival audio of that we could find, or that is actually accessible,” says Williams. Sometimes it was the cost of licensing that was prohibitive. “That inaccessibility felt really ironic in terms of what we were aiming to do, which is to shed light on, and share the voice of some of these major figures, some of whom have had less exposure in terms of the canon and in terms of the way this history has been written about,” says Williams. The Pūtātara team were cognisant of “perpetuating those absences, and of perpetuating who does have a lot of space, and in turn rendering other people invisible yet again”.
The shortcomings of archives came to the fore when they hit the 1980s. A turning point came in 1984 in the form of the Te Maori exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It was lauded for showcasing Māori art in the US, and for being a huge moment of international recognition. At the same time, it was criticised, and rightfully so, for excluding textiles (and thus wahine) and also contemporary art, which served to frame toi Māori as ethnographic artefacts. In response, exhibitions sprang up in Aotearoa that addressed these issues, but coverage of them was scarce. “There’s no material for us to be able to use,” says Williams. “We basically just have to fill in the gaps”. These absences made the team realise that “if we continue to talk about it in the same way it's always been talked about, then we’re just going to continue with the same exclusions”.
It’s these sorts of gaps that the Arts and Culture Podcast Co-Fund 2024 aimed to address. The fund was created on the back of the New Mirrors research which showed an alarming deficit in media coverage of arts and culture in Aotearoa. Creative New Zealand, NZ On Air and RNZ joined forces to support three new podcasts (of 209 eligible applications). Pūtātara could not have been created without this support, but the fund was a one-off. “There are ideas for what season two could look like,” says Williams, but she’s clear that it won’t happen without funding. Historians of the future may have much more gap-filling to do. For now, episodes of Pūtātara come out every Monday, and can be listened to here.
💥News on the wire
There’s a new arts journal!
The first issue The Art Lens came out on Monday – it’s free online with work by Eliana Gray, Ellie Bennett, Ava Reid, and more. You may recognise the editor-in-chief, TBI contributor Tunmise Adebowale. The Art Lens is youth-led and designed to support young (under 25) writers in Aotearoa by providing a platform to publish, promote, and discuss their work. It’s a place designed for emerging young writers to develop their voices, share their work publicly, and learn how to step into writing as a practice rather than as an aspiration. I love their colour choices and stars!
UXBRIDGE announces inaugural Creative Fellow, composer Jessie Leov
East Auckland’s creative hub has announced Jessie Leov, an award-winning orchestral, chamber, and choral music composer, as the recipient of their first annual $5,000 fellowship. Leov will use the fellowship to support her participation in the prestigious Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra’s Australian Composers School in Hobart. There she will compose four new orchestral works, including two works to be recorded in July 2026, a short film score in early 2027, and a concertino to be premiered in a public concert in late 2027. UXBRIDGE Director Paul Brobbel says “Jessie’s opportunity to expand her work on an international stage spoke to the heart of what these fellowships are about. We’re thrilled to lend support for her professional development”.
Boosted X Moana and E Tū Toi to continue
Boosted X Moana has been around since 2020, and has financially supported 157 Pasifika arts projects in that time using a match funding model – donations are matched dollar-for-dollar up to a set amount. The Arts Foundation, who run the Boosted platform, say on their website “Boosted X Moana helps Pasifika creatives grow audiences, generate income, and take their work to new national and international platforms.”
Boosted X Moana is returning with $150,000 in match funding to offer across two funding cohorts. However, there are fewer overall project slots, reflecting a goal to support Pasifika creatives to pursue larger-scale fundraising targets and “higher-value outcomes”. The first cohort applications open in April, and the second in August.
On the success of this model, last year Boosted and CNZ’s Māori Strategy & Partnerships team ran a pilot programme that provided targeted match funding to Māori creatives. E Tū Toi supported 14 Māori creative kaupapa, with $50,000 in match funding allocated across the projects. The programme is back, and looking to support 21 Māori-led creative kaupapa with a total of $94,000 in match funding this year. Registrations open 2 March.
Black Creatives mixer in Wellington
On 7 March Black Creatives Aotearoa are hosting a community mixer at Mother of Coffee – though the crew will be going to a talk by award-winning UK author Natasha Brown at Tāwhiri Warehouse beforehand. The mixer will be relaxed and have some shared kai – RSVP via Instagram.
And the Chartwell Trust New Commissions Writers for 2026 are...
Anoushka Coutler, Rahul Hendriksen, Ruby Macomber, Keiran Mclean, and Roro. For the first time the Chartwell Trust New Commissions programme at Artspace Aotearoa is including a cohort of writers alongside artists to support early-career contributions to cultural criticism and contemporary art discourse. Over the year, the rōpū will work in a peer-to-peer learning format with Artspace facilitators Felixe Laing and Bridget Riggir-Cuddy and each produce a published text.
DEPOT Devonport turns 30
DEPOT Artspace has a gallery, recording studio, music venue, ceramic studio, creative career centre, shop, and artist studios. For 30 years it’s been part of the prettiest of Auckland’s suburbs, Devonport. “DEPOT is about people and supporting creative ambition,” says Director Amy Saunders, who has led the organisation since 2020. “It’s about making space for artists to take risks, build skills, connect with others, and keep going. When creativity thrives, communities do too.”
Auckland Art Gallery back to being beautiful
Just a week after its 138th birthday, I walked past the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and saw the building wrap and safety fences being removed. The building has been partially covered since January 2023, when groundwater came up through the walls and floors of the basement following hours of torrential rain during the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods. Now the heritage building is back in full glory, and presumably waterproofed. It was opened in 1888, as one of Auckland's first civic establishments, housing the public library and municipal offices.
👀 Further reading
In this month’s National Grid, Claudia Long admires paste-ups from a 1960s counter-culture magazine, Earwig. She asks if the obsolete physical labour involved in this old-school method of laying out pages could offer us meaning today.
In a Soapbox, Suzanne Cowan challenges the prevalent notions that assume AI is either a neutral tool or an existential threat. Instead she considers it through a disability lens, and lets AI become a collaborator that allows the redistribution of agency.
Artist and advocate Fonotī Pati Umaga talks to The Spinoff about music, stereotypes and what people still don’t understand about disabilities.
Also over at The Spinoff, Sam Brooks talks to Hone Kouka on the 30-year legacy of Waiora Te Ukāipō, and there’s a few wonderful photos from 1996.
Theatre maker and filmmaker Stella Reid admits her guilty pleasure is the macabre in a revealing Shameless Plug.
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