A forked tongue, like that of a serpent, sits in the bottom right-hand corner of Chris Heaphy’s painting You’re Somehow Always Here. Embodying deception, it sits alongside other loaded symbols: a huia feather, for leadership and mana; a grand piano, a symbol of affluence in European society; a taniwha, a powerful guardian.
In August 2024 the Waitangi Tribunal called for the government to abandon the Treaty Principles Bill, with Ngāti Hine leader and claimant Pita Tipene stating that the government was being ‘deceitful’ and ‘devious’. The forked tongue rises out of the murky waters of Heaphy’s painting, subtle yet heavy with condemnation.
Heaphy is of both Kāi Tahu and European descent, and his use of colonial symbols plays with the duality, and friction, of this identity. Utilising recognisable iconography, he explores how different combinations of images can evoke new narratives. In Bird Life, five large paintings dominate the frontgallery, each echoing Heaphy’s familiar lexicon, with icons set against rhythmic veils of colour. The foreground and background collapse in places, yet a visual tension still arises between abstract layers of dragged paint and sharp pictorial elements. Birds sit atop vases, or urns, and Māori warrior heads sit in profile, adorned with huia feathers. Now extinct after years of hunting and habitat destruction, the huia used to be sacred—its feathers were worn to tangi or as a war plume. Are Heaphy’s warriors mourning the past, or are they armed for future battles?
