To gaze heavenward at a star-encrusted sky is, by definition, to peer upon creation itself. For the fabric of our universe, the primordial filaments of genesis, was forged in the blazing heart of those celestial furnaces, a stellar tapestry within which we are immutably interwoven. Our threads of existence, knitted at a subatomic level, were once the heart of stars themselves; and so, to glimpse upwards in the hushed darkness of night is to see our whakapapa immortalised in twinkling, iridescent majesty. Thus, the phrase we use to speak of our ancestors: rātou kua wheturangihia, those metamorphosed into the stars above.
It is this beauty of creation, stitched into a narrative of light and dark, that Lissy Robinson-Cole (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Kahu) and Rudi Robinson (Ngāruahine, Te Arawa, Ngāti Pāoa, Waikato ki Tai) harness in their textured masterpieces, Wharenui Harikoa and ‘E Te Tau’ (both 2023). “It’s about shining the light of our beautiful tūpuna to the world,” explains Lissy. A new and exciting take on the art of whakairo, ornamental sculpting and carving, Wharenui Harikoa and ‘E Te Tau’ are, respectively, a scale replica of an ancestral wharenui, or meeting house, and a series of wheku, carved representations of human faces, sculpted not in wood—as is typical—but in elaborate, crocheted neon wool.
As in material, so in the cosmos: Lissy and Rudi’s work here giving greater meaning to the sage reflections of the Reverend Māori Marsden in his magnum opus on Te Ao Māori, The Woven Universe (2003). Their work surfaces the powerful, entwined relationship between medium and message, between wool as fibrous foundation and the embedded purpose of “transforming intergenerational trauma into deeply felt joy,” as the artists describe. Colonisation has imprinted pain and anguish onto recent memory for Māori, unstitching tangata from whenua, people from place, and tangata from the fabric of identity. That profound inequities endure in our communities today shows how knotted and entangled these experiences are, and it is this reality that both Wharenui Harikoa and ‘E Te Tau’ are woven within. “Wool is absorbent, strong, and resilient,” explains Lissy; “Wool can absorb the mamae, the pain we feel, it can hold us, and it can absorb and transmit joy.”
The works remind us of the warmth of Nanny’s blankie on a sharp, cold wintry night, at a sculptural, elemental level. Housed in the gallery’s darkened exhibition hall, Wharenui Harikoa awakens under ultraviolet light into shining radiance. Set ablaze by the very night itself, a vivified silhouette of fluorescence is revealed, arising suddenly from the shadows. Scaffolded by an aluminium and polycarbonate frame, the visually dramatic wharenui is adorned with elaborate and articulate whakairo wūru, woollen carvings, from intricate tukutuku, panels of ornamental latticework, to carved pou, columns, in the likeness of recent and distant tūpuna. The sudden transition from dark to light is matched by its depth of meaning; spun of an electrifying tapestry of life, of anguish, of hope, of intergenerational healing, the works embody the interplay between joy and struggle. “We do it one loop at a time,” describe Lissy and Rudi, about their methodical approach to production, a deliberately unhurried way of creating the fabric whakairo. Just like carving in wood, their process demands patience in the back-and-forth encounter between artisan and medium. In this forced pause of breath, a hurried world becomes still, the jarring cacophony of the outside world momentarily muted. As viewers gaze upon the luminous final form of Wharenui Harikoa, they are invited to experience this stillness of mind, a serenity made possible only by finding light in the dark.
That purpose and healing emerge from the dark is no accident in Te Ao Māori, for existence, as we know it, emerged from the primordial void, Te Kore. Refusing the biblical conventions of night and day, Te Kore is understood instead as a realm of limitless potential and being, the nothingness from which everything was born. ‘E Te Tau’—oh, my darling—carries this fortitude of meaning into the production of eight unique wheku. Experienced together, ‘the Eight’ again tell a story of dark to light, tracing the journey from Te Kore to Te Ao Mārama, the realm of light, from the latent potential of the deepest dark to the brilliant possibilities of inexhaustible light. Here, the monochromatic pair of the black wheku, Tumanako ki te Kore, and its inverse, Ao Mārama ki Ahuru, bookends a spectrum of colour hitherto unperceivable—but fully imaginable—in the void of Te Kore. This spectrum consists of the six remaining wheku, from Te Whitinga o te Rā, inspired by the early dawn and crest of new beginnings; Paki ki te Harikoa, reflecting Matariki above, and the clarity of vision we attain as we herald in the new lunar year; and the four cardinal directions in Aotearoa—Harikoa ki te Tai Tonga, the joy and happiness of the south; Waimārie ki te Tai Rāwhiti, the providence and fortune of the east; Taumata ki te Tai Tokerau, the summit of passion and strength in the north; and Tūranga ki te Hauāuru, the unwavering devotion, steadfastness and loyalty of the west. Lissy and Rudi describe their work as “a refractive prism of tūpuna-inspired light,” and just as a rainbow of colour is unleashed as white light passes through such a prism, so too does ‘E Te Tau’ unearth an optics of spectacular phosphorescence, tempered with formidable purpose.
The inert potential of Te Kore is realised in Wharenui Harikoa and ‘E Te Tau’ by riding the hazardous crest between convention and innovation, in daring to offer a new way to see and experience Te Ao Māori. The textile wharenui and wheku are world firsts, with half a tonne of technicolour wool used in Wharenui Harikoa alone, deviating from conventional whakairo. This frontier, this interface, between tradition and divergence is one our tūpuna have long straddled, seeking to push boundaries into the unknown, immortalised in the heroic ancestral figure of Māui-pōtiki. In seeking advice from master carvers, as well as their wider whānau, on their wishes and intentions for their work, Lissy and Rudi have achieved just this: invoking Māui-pōtiki and bringing the cultural mainstay of Te Ao Māori into the avant-garde of the now, transgressing orthodoxy to unveil a shimmering world of new possibilities. From beneath the intricate crochet, therefore, comes a fearlessness and determination of spirit to carry Wharenui Harikoa and ‘E Te Tau’ into the day, to take them into a world where kaupapa- and tikanga-driven artistry is not always guaranteed the reverence it so deserves. Sailing into these new horizons blazes a trail for those to come, pushing boundaries and redefining the way we see and make sense of the world around us.
This fusion of warm and cold, of dark and light, is at the heart of Lissy and Rudi’s craft. Rudi recounts how his previous work with imprisoned tāne Māori centred around crochet, the woolly medium forming a textile tether to their memories of sitting with Nanny, or in bed beneath the quilted blankets her hands had made. “Because the medium is soft, people soften,” he says, and as tāne took to crochet, a new possibility emerged: “You can be soft but staunch, for this is another way of expressing yourself as a Māori man.” To truly experience joy—to appreciate the wonders of what is—is to know of the aching pain of sorrow and suffering. The artists acknowledge this elemental truth: to fully appreciate the frequency of joy is to have experienced the loss and despair that makes the human experience a universal one, a joy knowable only through the melancholy of everyday life.
In the epoch of our tūpuna’s tūpuna, who ventured forth from the ancient homeland of Hawaiki innumerable generations ago, bioluminescent sea creatures lit the way as our ancestors made their earliest oceanic journey to Aotearoa. The journey of these incandescent kaitiaki, these guardians upon the waves, is particularly captured in Taumata ki te Tai Tokerau and Wharenui Harikoa. Both represent a pathway aglow for the plethora of uri Māori, descendants, to reconnect with Te Ao Māori; those who, through the machinations of colonisation and urbanisation, have been cast adrift from their cultural moorings, from their whenua, marae, tikanga and reo. Tikanga associated with marae underpins Wharenui Harikoa, with those in attendance removing their shoes before entry, partaking in karakia when opening the event, and singing waiata in support of Lissy and Rudi. Moreover, the crocheting of Taumata ki te Tai Tokerau and her seven siblings incorporates a bobble stitch, a distinctive three-dimensional stitch that represents the innumerable maunga and awa that give shape and meaning to our quilted whenua. Together, form and function fuse to offer limitless expressions of ‘being Māori’, both as instruments of reconnection for those whānau adrift, and also as a gracious invitation for curious onlookers to participate therein.
Whakairo in any form tell a story—be it of love, loss, learning, or leadership—and these messages are imparted to our whānau and young people through artistic expression. When I visited Wharenui Harikoa in late 2022, the buoyancy of spirit, amplified by the vibrancy of colour and form, was as arresting as it was tranquillising. For Lissy and Rudi, the glow-in-the-dark spectacle—a feat made possible only through modern technology—transports us to an aperture between this world and the next, to the “much deeper realm [where] the tūpuna and atua [reside].” It is this space, recreated in both sculptural exhibitions, that produces such an atmosphere of healing, reconnection and belonging. Wharenui Harikoa and ‘E Te Tau’ are ancestrally ordained in design and ingenious (or perhaps, Indig-enious!) in execution, bowing respectfully to the past while embracing with vigour the present and future. Patiently weaving ribbons of light and dark, Lissy and Rudi reveal to us, in sparkling luminescence, a universe truly woven of radiant beauty.
Header image: Lissy and Rudi Robinson Cole, Wharenui Harikoa, 2022. Installation view, Dowse Art Museum. Photo: Mark Tantrum
