You can learn about an artist by asking them who they look up to, who they learned the most from, who they dream of exhibiting with. In Friends + Family, at the Arts House Trust, early-career artist Ercan Cairns (Ngāi Tūhoe, Tongan/‘Utungake and Tu‘anuku, German) answers these questions, revealing much—not only about himself, but also about those who have shaped his practice. Cairns grew up in the arts community in Tāmaki Makarau Auckland; it was his art school. He counts among his teachers both esteemed senior practitioners, such as Fatu Feu‘u (Sāmoan) and Emily Karaka (Ngāpuhi, Waikato-Tainui), and respected mid-career artists, such as Alexis Neal (Ngāti Awa, Te Āti Awa). His mother, Dagmar Dyck (Tongan, German), is an accomplished artist and educator. She provides an introduction to the show, in which she stresses the value of cross-disciplinary, intergenerational and reciprocal approaches to education long practised within Māori and Moana communities.

Friends + Family includes works by Cairns’ mentors, works by Cairns himself and collaborative works by both. There are fine examples within each group. The paintings and sculptures of Donn Ratana (Ngāi Tūhoe) are deeply considered and felt. I am especially drawn to Ōrākau – Unbridled Souvenir Hunters, 1864 (2023), a response to the final chapter in the invasion of Waikato (1863– 64), the battle of Ōrākau, which involved the artist’s Tūhoe tūpuna. Painted on unstretched canvas and monumental in scale, it reminds me of similarly charged pieces by Robyn Kahukiwa (Ngā- ti Porou, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti) as well as Guernica (1937) by Pablo Picasso. A gash of red sky runs along the top edge of the painting; below is a tangle of figures and greenery. A stampede of black horses and sword-brandishing Pākehā soldiers bears down on a group of Māori as they attempt to retreat from Ōrākau Pā.

The soldiers and horses are unspeakably ferocious. Both are shown with red eyes and bared teeth. The Māori depicted are all wāhine and tamariki, in acknowledgment of the families present and killed at Ōrākau (it is recorded that some women were “bayoneted as they lay wounded”).[1] Ratana shows them wearing tāniko headbands and piupiu. They look like souvenir dolls and so call to mind the dehumanisation and stereotyping of Māori in the past and present. The work as a whole counters romantic or triumphant images of the New Zealand Wars created by Gustavus von Tempsky—a Forest Ranger who was present at the battle of Ōrākau—and others. Its title evokes the pursuit of trophies of war, killing for sport, and the collection of toi moko, tattooed heads, by individuals like Horatio Gordon Robley, who was also a soldier.

Although he embraces figuration, Cairns shies away from narrative. His preference for improvisation—for letting his works develop of their own accord, without a plan in mind or on paper—yields pieces full of emotion and allows the influences of others to show through. Passages of high-key colour put me in mind of works by Dyck. An especially powerful painting, Blood Pūkana (2023), with its fiery eyes and its poetic balancing of strength and vulnerability, speaks to Ōrākau. It also recalls works by Karaka, whose relationship with Cairns is the one most pronounced in Friends + Family. Her influence is felt in many of his paintings, and her collaborations with him are the most impressive in the show.

The largest piece by the two artists, City of $ales (2023), explores themes familiar to those who know Karaka’s art: the evils of raupatu, or land confiscations; her work representing her iwi in business and treaty settlement negotiations; and the political complexities of the Tāmaki Makaurau region. A magenta waka with a large sternpost refers to the important status of Tāmaki for Tainui; it is te kei o te waka o Tainui, the stern of the Tainui waka. Above the waka is the inscription ‘kia tūpato ki te remu o tāku kākahu’, ‘beware the hem of my cloak’. These words, spoken by the first Māori King, Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, also point to the tensions the area attracts. The America’s Cup and Sky Tower refer to major deals done in recent decades. A serpent-like entity, marked with hissing Ss and Es for Emily and Ercan, is curiously ambiguous—at once fearsome and benign in appearance.

Unlike other well-known intergenerational collaborative works, such as those made by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat in the United States, or by Gordon Walters (Pākehā) and Chris Heaphy (Kāi Tahu) in Aotearoa, City of $ales does not involve a collaging of disparate elements by the artists. Instead it sees Karaka and Cairns integrate their styles, producing a work of great coherence. Two voiccs speak as one. Karaka ostensibly takes the lead and her hand is more apparent. But Cairns’ presence is felt, too: in areas of more naturalistic painting (the tower, the trophy, a train ploughing its way across the picture) and in the sky, as well as in the overall feeling of the piece. It is noticeably different to recent works by Karaka alone, including those in Friends + Family.

City of $ales reminds me that Karaka has long supported young people and has always done so materially, not merely in words. The upper portion of the painting features pale blues, pinks and yellows, colours also present in works she made in the early 1990s. Often painted on large pieces of paper and ngātu, Tongan barkcloth, these saw Karaka explore connections to Moana, urban and youth communities in Tāmaki Makaurau. They also grew out of a period in which she worked closely with her then partner Norman Te Whata (Ngāpuhi). The two created artworks uniting his sculpture with her painting—some of the most successful collaborative pieces ever made in this country, in my view—and engaged in extensive social work with rangatahi in difficult circumstances.

All the works made collaboratively by Karaka and Cairns in Friends + Family were produced in her Glen Innes studio, which she made freely available to him. Standing in front of City of $ales, I find myself wondering about the exchanges, spoken and silent, that flowed between the two artists as it was being painted. Stories were surely recounted, matters discussed, knowledge transferred. The particulars remain private, but they suffuse the resulting picture, strengthening it, giving it a unique character and greatness. Like Friends + Family as a whole, the painting testifies to the wonderful things that happen when—as Dyck puts it in her introduction to the show—“elders themselves share an openness and vulnerability.”