What lies beyond our everyday encounters with water? How well do we see the stories that water holds? In Te Ara Ātea’s new art exhibition, Undercurrents, artists offer us a different way of seeing and thinking about our relationship to water in Waikirikiri Selwyn. Essential to life on Earth, there are endless thoughts and perspectives about water; Undercurrents includes just six of them.

Undercurrents presents commissioned artworks by Tia Barrett, Megan Brady, Madison Kelly, and Pauline Rhodes alongside work by John Bevan Ford and Emily Parr on loan from the Lincoln University Art Collection and the University of Canterbury Art Collection. Each artist tells a story that prompts us to think about the many waters that surround us and the stories that flow beneath.

Walk wanawana walk, 2023
Madison Kelly (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Pākehā)
Aluminium, rivets, felt
Courtesy of the artist

‘The kupu Māori wanawana holds several meanings, including “shiver, trill, quiver, fear, thrill” ... the work is built around the sensory feedback of touch and vibration to emulate a taniwha-like “shiver and hiss” installation watching over (and calling out to) visitors of Te Ara Ātea.’ - Madison Kelly

Madison Kelly’s interactive installation, Walk wanawana walk, provides a sensory experience of “wanawana”. Depicting the scale pattern of the Canterbury Grass Skink’s head and eye, the installation features metallic scales etched with detailed field drawings from Selwyn’s waterways alongside illustrations of skinks and their habitats. The metallic scales are punctured with rivets and reference sizzle symbols that drummers use to create rattling and hissing sound. This experience is a mihi to hiss and scuttle of the atua of reptiles, Tūtewanawana, whose grandfather is Takaroa, atua of the sea. Reptiles in te ao Maōri are also connected to taniwha, guardians of bodies of water. In Waikirikiri Selwyn, Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere is home to the taniwha Tūterakiwhanoa.

Madison Kelly, Walk wanawana walk (detail), 2024.

Kelly invites you to explore a tactile experience of the features Waikirikiri Selwyn’s reptilian habitats; the Tī Kouka tree’s flowers, tussocks providing sustenance, sun-warmed river stones, and the vital water’s edge. It highlights the importance of Selwyn’s braided rivers and their margins—key habitats for native geckos and skinks threatened by environmental changes.

In te ao Māori, mokomoko are kaitiaki, or guardians, of their environments. In ecology, they serve as bioindicators of ecosystem health; their presence indicates that their ecosystem is healthy while their absence indicates that ecosystem is struggling. Kelly underscores the interconnectedness of waterways and the diverse life they sustain, reminding us that these ecosystems are deeply intertwined whakapapa.

Glossary of Māori Terms

Kupu Māori - Māori word

Mihi – acknowlegement

Atua - deity, ancestor with continuing influence

Te ao Maōri - the Maōri world

Tī Kouka – Cabbage tree

Mokomoko – native lizards

Whakapapa - genealogy

Between tide and time, 2023
Megan Brady (Kāi Tahu, Ngāi Tūāhuriri, Pākehā)
Steel, linen
Courtesy of the artist

Megan Brady is on a journey to reconnect with her home. After discovering her Ngāi Tūāhuriri whakapapa, she has been spending time on her tūrakawaewae in and around Ōtautahi Christchurch. Between tide and time considers the tide, which wraps around the coast from the Rakahuri Ashley awa to Taumutu, as a site of connection. This tide, Te Tai o Mahaanui, connects the marae of Ngāi Tūāhuriri to Ngāi Te Ruahikihiki ki Taumutu, mana whenua of Waikirikiri Selwyn.

The steel structure traces the distinctive curve of Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū Banks Peninsula and supports seven lengths of linen, suspended from tracings of pōhatu Brady collected along the shoreline. The six breaks between the fabric indicate where different hapū are located along the coast, a mihi to Brady’s whanauka and the interconnected network of Kāi Tahu hapū. For Brady, home is found in identity and connection with others, as well as a physical place.

The threads removed from the fabric create a repeating pattern which depicts the cycles of water. Beginning with the tide of Mahaanui, clouds form over the ocean and rain falls on the mountains before moving through the rivers and returning to the sea. This pattern was inspired by the poem ‘The River is an Island’, written by Hone Tuwhare, a favourite poet of Brady and her father. In Te Ara Ātea, Between tide and time ebbs and flows not with the tide, but with the changing sunlight and the movement of people who spend time with it.

Glossary of Māori terms

Whakapapa – genealogy

Tūrakawaewae - a place where one has rights of residence and belonging through kinship and whakapapa.

Awa – river

Pōhatu- rocks

Hapū - kinship group, subtribe

Mihi – Acknowledgement

Whanauka – relative, kin

With thanks to Te Tai o Mahaanui, Pete Brady, Brady whānau, Henry Francis, Puamiria Parata-Goodall, Denise Sheat, Chloe Cull, Ollie Roake, Bella Roake, Paige Jansen, Alix Ashworth, Ngaio Cowell, Orissa Keane, Ray Moreton, Steve Trevella, Rob Palmer, Peter Nock, Paemanu Ngāi Tahu Contemporary Visual Art

Te āhua o te wai | The em[Body]ment of Water, 2024
Tia Barrett (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mamoe, Te Rapuwai, Waitaha, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Tamainupō)
Digital video (6 mins) and mōteatea
Courtesy of the artist

“I want to invite viewers to contemplate our relationship with ngā whenua me ngā wai and the responsibilities inherent in its protection.” - Tia Barrett

Te āhua o te wai | The em[Body]ment of Water is a moving image artwork paired with a mōteatea created and composed by artist Tia Barrett whose whakapapa connects her to Te Roto o Wairewa Lake Forsyth. Barrett filmed at both Wairewa Lake Forsyth and Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere with permission from mana whenua. The em[Body]ment of Water begins with soft waves gently rolling over submarine footage, framed by river stones, shifting to locations of significance and connection points.

Tia Barrett, Te āhua o te wai | The em[Body]ment of Water (installation view), 2024.

The intention for The em[Body]ment of Water is to reflect the hope of healing and protection for this body of water. Barrett focuses on the increasing strength of mauri and health of the lake while also acknowledging the impact of environmental damage that results from colonisation and climate change. The artwork provides a visual reminder of the achievements of aspirational restoration projects that are improving the health of the lake.

Barrett describes the mōteatea,* Te āhua o te wai*, as ‘he karakia, he karanga, he waiata aroha’ which translates to a incantation/prayer, a call, a song of love. It speaks to positivity and hope and invisons abundance for future generations. Every time this mōteatea is heard or preformed it will envoke a healing process that will narrate wellbeing back into these lands and waterways.

Glossary for Māori Terms

Mōteatea – traditional chant, lament

Ngā whenua me ngā wai - the land and the water

Whakapapa – geneology

Mauri – life force

Kā roto – the lake, the wetlands

Manu whenua - Māori who have ancestral claims and territorial rights over a particular area

The artist would like to acknowledge her Ngāti Irakehu o Wairewa whānui, and Ngāi Te Ruahikihiki o Taumutu, mana whenua for Waikirikiri Selwyn.

With thanks to Puamiria Parata-Goodall, Matiu Prebble and his tauira at Canterbury University, Paemanu - Ngai Tahu Contemporary Visual Arts, Caitlin Rose Donnelly, the artist’s whānau Nadia Maddock, Richard Hinks and their children Macey, Ollie and Hattie, the artist’s mother Dr Alvina Jean Edwards, the artist’s brother Tui Tuwairua Barrett and his daughter Ngākauri-Kaihou Ropata Barrett, Zena Elliott and the Ereatara Whānau.

Tongatapu (Full Moon), 2019, Photographic print, UC-APC-1325, University of Canterbury Art Collection
Tauranga Moana (Dusk), 2021, Photographic print, UC-APC-1325, University of Canterbury Art Collection
Emily Parr (Ngāi Te Rangi, Moana, Pākehā)
35mm film (digital scan)
Courtesy of the University of Canterbury Art Collection

“You see, it is not just the whales who, for generations upon generations, have followed these ancient oceanic pathways and formed webs of relations between fixed points. These are my ancestral legacies, too.” - Emily Parr

During Emily Parr’s Masters research at AUT University, she reconnected with her ancestral homelands on haerenga to Samoa, Tonga, and Tauranga Moana. Though, it might be more accurate to say that she reconnected with her ancestral homewaters.

Parr describes herself as a descendent of settler-indigenous relationships across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. The journeys of her European male ancestors have been well documented but the stories of the women they married when they reached the pacific are largely unknown. In an effort to get to know the indigenous women Parr descends from, she returned to their waters, traversing Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa as her ancestors did for generations.

While on this haerenga, Parr retraced these migration lines of her ancestors. In doing so, Parr also traced the migration of paikea, southern humpback whales, that travel from Antarctica along the eastern coast of Aotearoa New Zealand to reach the warm waters of the Pacific to breed. Parr’s whakapapa is tied to these whales through an ancestor she shares with Ngāi Tahu, Paikea, who was known for riding a humpback whale.

To capture these layers of whakapapa and connection, Parr used film photography because of its ability to capture wairua when the image is made from the traces light leaves on a negative. In these photographs Parr shows us a view of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean, as a space that connects islands and people rather than isolating them from each other.

Glossary of Māori Words

Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa – the Pacific Ocean

Haeranga – journeys

Whakapapa - genealogy

Wairua – spirit

Rivers to Ocean, 2023
Pauline Rhodes
Mixed media installation
Courtesy of the artist

Pauline Rhodes has always been preoccupied with the health of our waterways. In Rivers to Ocean Rhodes brings together an abstract installation of paintings on canvas, stained plywood and textiles to ‘draw attention to our oceans and rivers and encourage an awareness of their value to all life on earth’.

After being introduced to the geology department while at University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in the early 1970s, Rhodes has had an enduring interest in the geological history of Waitaha, the Canterbury Plains, and Horomaka, Banks Peninsula. In geological time, the area that is now Waikirikiri Selwyn, was once under the ocean. As Rhodes recalls, ‘in that period, even before the land of the plains was built up by the rivers flowing down from the Alpine Ranges, the sea surrounded Horomaka Banks Peninsula.

This Island was formed between eleven and eight million years ago by the eruptions of two volcanoes. More recently the unique braided rivers of what is now the plains have been rapidly changed by human habitation.’

The fabric that flows through the cases have been repeatedly used by Rhodes in her fleeting interventions in the intertidal zone, an area she has worked with since 1972. In Te Ara Ātea, the textiles now wind their way around and over River Flow panels of stained ply, reflecting Rhodes’ ‘ongoing concern for the state of the oceans of the world and for the rivers which flow into them’.

List of works

Pauline Rhodes, Oceans 1, 2024, acrylic on canvas
Pauline Rhodes, Oceans 2, 2024, acrylic on canvas
Pauline Rhodes, Oceans 3, 2024, acrylic on canvas
Pauline Rhodes, Oceans 4, 2024, acrylic on canvas
Pauline Rhodes, Oceans 5, 2024, acrylic on canvas
Pauline Rhodes, River Flows, 1990s, stained plywood, linen, silk, wool

Te Hono Ki Waihora, 1990
John Bevan Ford (Ngāti Raukawa ki Kapiti)
Ink on paper
Courtesy of the Lincoln University Art Collection

‘Sometimes like a mist enveloping the island, and eventually as if the cloak of some invisible elder were drifting above the land and sea, a symbol of mana lifted up as it were, making room for us all. A cloak to warm us, to bind us, to spiritually enfold us.’- John Bevan Ford

Te Hono Ki Waihora is part of the Te Hono or Connection series by artist John Bevan Ford. Ford grew up in Leeston until he was ten years old and chose to include the lake of his boyhood, Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere, years later when reflecting on significant landscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Ford described the kākahu motif in this series as ‘one of the great symbols of mana’. Floating above Te Waihora is a kaitaka, one of the most prestigious types of cloaks reserved for rakatira because it required technical mastery and the highest quality of muka.

In the cloak that Ford has created, the pattern used to create the kaupapa, the main body of the kākahu, is the same that fills the hills and the lakeside below. The kaupapa of kaitaka is formed by tightly weaving fibres together to create a sturdy fabric. By using the same pattern in the landscape of Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere and the Port Hills, Ford emphasises that the people who live in this landscape are tightly woven together as well.

Under the floating kākahu sits Te Waihora is filled with countless colourful threads that converge the middle of the lake. By portraying Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere in this way, Ford creates a visual depiction of the mana held by Ngāi Te Ruahikihiki ki Taumutu over this body of water and the hono, connections, it has to those who live on its shores.

Glossary for Māori Terms
Mana – prestige, spiritual power
Kākahu – cloak
Kaitaka – a highly prized cloak made of flax fibre with a tāniko ornamental border
Rakatira – chief
Muka – prepared flax fibre