Whānau Mārama gathers together Māori artists and researchers under the nine whetū of Matariki to deepen collective understanding of the Māori new year. Presented throughout the Commercial Bay precinct, the artworks reflect Indigenous ways of knowing and being, remembering histories, documenting the present, and re-imagining the world to come. As a cluster, as a map, the artists and works guide us towards an Indigenous Future.

Facilitated by artist Jade Townsend, Whānau Mārama celebrates the mātauranga associated with Matariki throughout common spaces and a selection of stores at Commercial Bay. You will find objects and interventions: moving image works in shop fronts, ceramics on countertops, advertising screens loaded with pūrākau. Take a moment to consider how the artworks connect with the Matariki star cluster and the festival to which it gives its name.

Free Tours around starting at Season Gallery from 18 June - 10 July at 12:10pm daily.  Find out more here.

All Exhibitions

Jade Townsend (Ngāti Kahungunu) is the curator of Whānau Mārama. Townsend is also a visual artist and Co-Director of Season, a new contemporary gallery at Commercial Bay. Townsend is interested creating politically and socially minded art activations which explore cultural unity.

Tyrone Ohia (Ngāti Pukenga, Ngāi te Rangi) is an award-winning designer developed the graphic identity for Whānau Mārama. He works across a range of industries, from printed publications to spatial design, operating through his company called Extended Whānau.

Maungarongo Te Kawa (Ngāti Porou) is an artist, storyteller, quilter, and fashion designer. He presents a solo exhibition called Heavenly Bodies at Season and Hinetakarua a large scale textile in the Commercial Bay’s Wheriko laneway.

Neke Moa (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu/Kāi Tahu, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) responds to Aotea through sculptural and adornment work. Her practice as a jeweller and carver explores the whakapapa of materials.

Arielle Walker (Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) and Emily Parr (Ngāi Te Rangi, Moana, Pākehā) exhibit Haratua at twenty-seven names. Video and plant-dyed fibres can be seen in the window display with poetic exchanges on the changing room mirrors.

Heidi Brickell (Te Hika o Pāpāuma, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Kahungunu, Rongomaiwahine, Rangitāne) exhibits paintings at Wynn Hamlyn. Brickell’s works are deeply dependent on processes of layering, incorporating rabbit skin size, pieces and threads of canvas, and a range of pigments.

The Angela Morton Room of Takapuna Library presents a collection of pukapuka in the Ground Floor Display Cases at Commercial Bay. A range of Māori art books and other printed materials from the Angela Morton Room Te Pātaka Toi Art Library can be enjoyed here in a special public display. The selection has been inspired by exhibition firsts in Māori art.

Te Ara Minhinnick (Ngāti Te Ata) exhibits Mō Rātou Mā, a sculpture and audio work at Yu Mei. Mō Rātou Mā is a sculptural womb, imbued with the tangi (sound) of three generations of wāhine reciting waiata (lamenting songs). 

Lissy (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Kahu) and Rudi Robinson-Cole (Ngāruahine, Ngāti Tū, Ngāti Paoa, Waikato) take over the windows of Kate Spade with their sculptures. Husband and wife duo Lissy and Rudi bring joy and wonder through their crochet-based art, the interlocking of crochet symbolises their vibrant wairua (spirit). 

Dr Bobby Luke (Ngāti Ruanui, Taranaki) is artist-in-residence and kaihautū for NOOK, once a styling suite, now dedicated to decolonising fashion aesthetics, to empower women in their individuality and inspire creativity through sentimental design and articles of our past.

T-shirts x Kōkako. Māori designed t-shirts line the back wall, it is where customers might normally put their own coats or bags. How can you bring vital messages and motifs into the spaces or places of ritual in your life?

Stevei Houkāmau (Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Scotland) presents uku sculptures at The Gentry. In his group of works, Houkāmau employs a wide range of visual languages to encode knowledge and genealogy as uku.

Kayley Ngawati (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Tonga), Āio Mataira-Whare (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu, Raukawa, Ngāpuhi), Hana Tuwhare (Ngāpuhi) have created poems for Ahi restaurant. The words for these Matariki poems were captured during an evening taking in the sights, smells, textures and flavors of Ahi.

Learn about all the artists at matariki.commercialbay.co.nz.