![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bestir.red\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Hautrey-Bay.jpg\")
https:\/\/ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz\/delivery\/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE212156<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
The second map shows that Hawtrey Bay (now Days Bay) had become Section 33, assigned to an incoming colonist:<\/p>\n\n\n\n And finally, in the third map – actually an advertisement – the original section has been subdivided into the classic “quarter acre” sections dear to Kiwi hearts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s a lot wrapped up in this final advertisement that’s worth unpicking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Traditional M\u0101ori society did not have a concept of absolute ownership of land. Wh\u0101nau (extended families) and hap\u016b (sub-tribes) could have different rights to the same piece of land. One group may have the right to catch birds in a particular clump of trees, another to fish in the water nearby, and yet another to grow crops on the surrounding land. Exclusive boundaries were rare, and rights were constantly being renegotiated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, my initial idea is to recreate some of the early advertising, to show what it might have looked like if the audience were people who would be integrating<\/em> into Days Bay, rather than simply overlaying<\/em> their culture on top of the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Until 1839 there were only about 2,000 immigrants in New Zealand, and perhaps 70,000 M\u0101ori; by 1852 there were about 28,000 immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what would the advert have been proposing? Perhaps the local Iwi would be offering to hold a hui with interested parties, to discuss how mutually beneficial arrangements could be made, so that people moving to New Zealand would have a place to call home?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps, in the spirit of continuity and to show flexibility towards Western customs, the Iwi were willing to negotiate a term for the agreement, to allow whanau with young families to settle until the parents passed away, or until a mutually agreeable date, whichever was shorter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Included in the agreement for an area of land for a house to be built could be rights to use the common facilities in Days Bay, for example to hunt in the hills behind the bay, or to fish in certain areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The local Iwi might have been looking for people who had valuable skills to bring to the community, or who were willing to invest in the community in various ways. There may be no fixed ideas about this – this could have been the start of a dialogue, and the hui could be for the people of the Iwi and the new immigrants to get to know each other and start discussing how best to live together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe look at these next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having spoken to Matthijs, he pointed out something really obvious here: that I’m still approaching this from a Western mode of thinking. He suggested that this is a potentially dangerous road to go down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, I took this opportunity to speak to a M\u0101ori colleague about this (albeit briefly), and yes, I’m on a concerning track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This feels like you’re trying to say, “if only P\u0101keh\u0101 had understood M\u0101ori tikanga, everything could have worked out differently and everyone would have lived happily ever after”. That sounds very na\u00efve and Pollyanna, and you’re still telling the story from a P\u0101keh\u0101 point of view.<\/p>(Quote as remembered by me – anonymous by request)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n At that point, I pretty much gave up on that idea, and moved onto to think a lot more about what I wanted to achieve through this piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, I’d view it as a kind of failure if I didn’t really push myself outside my comfort zone with this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can default to a kind of, “yes, M\u0101ori lived here, they got displaced, let’s tell the story of that and try and relate to it”. But, is that really what I want to say about the place I live, or I am being constrained by the expectation boundaries of this course?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What am<\/span> I trying to get across? I want to show that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do<\/span> want to show that I’ve got a new understanding of Days Bay, and that it has affected my understanding of where I’m living. But, there’s more to it than that. I also want to reflect my long time and history living in the UK and the baggage that brings, and I want to do the same for my time in Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have reconciled my experiences with those two countries, and I have yet to reconcile my life in New Zealand. I want to show that. That, I guess, is that imbalance I’m feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, thought though how I might use the triangle idea as a kind of scaffolding on which to show my knowledge, and lack of knowledge, and the unbalanced\/unfinished feeling that I have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I came up with another concept, which was to build a canvas on a triangular stretcher, but leaving the canvas edges raw. Then, collage onto it some of the information that I’ve gathered during the “explore” phase of the project and some more things about my memories of the UK and Japan for contrast:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This felt kind of interesting, but I don’t need the UK\/Japan things on it to make my point. It felt like this should be about New Zealand, and my pre- and post-colonial understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also had the idea of laminating native wood and imported wood together to make a strong framework, but this felt a bit forced somehow. I didn’t let it go though – love my woodworking too much!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn’t feel that this concept showed enough of that unbalanced\/unfinished feeling, so I kept thinking about it rather than jump straight into making it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next concept was to use a regular canvas as a kind of foundation, but to have another partially formed canvas emerging from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A kind of unformed, unfinished canvas emerging from a mass of information. I could re-use an old canvas for the main one, and I could have used a similar premade canvas for the emerging one, but I would have had to cut it up anyway, so I thought I may as well build a stretcher and put raw canvas on it myself. I had the idea of using a native and non-native timber for the framing, to show a kind of laminated, stretch-in-unity idea, but that started to feel a bit too forced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before I abandoned the idea, I did actually go ahead and build the wooden frame using native matai timber (from an offcut of old weatherboard) and some plain pine, with a raw canvas covering. On completion though it just feel too busy and fussy for what I was trying to achieve, so it went unused. It will no doubt get reused for another project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, having given up on the wooden frame, I realised that I could get a better, and lighter weight, effect if I built the emerging canvas from corflute. Rather than stick to my original idea of the frame being a canvas, I made the emerging triangle bigger and little more dramatic. It still adhered to my original concept though, as the foundation canvas was unchanged and still had the hole in it the exact same shape as my section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I started to assemble the piece, I realised that a lot of the photos and articles that I’d collected of colonial history dated from the 19th and early 20th century, so were in mainly black and white. The images of M\u0101ori life were in the main more recent photos and illustrations. This gave me an idea: I could use only black and white items to represent my knowledge of colonial history, and use colour to show the gap in my understanding of m\u0101tauranga M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, I rearranged my items and then fit them to the shape of the underlying composite canvas, giving the result below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Initial idea I want to create some kind of artwork, perhaps a painting or collage. We discussed our ideas as a group in class, and it appears that a collage is a pretty “standard” idea, but to be blunt I’m really not a fan of collages. That doesn’t make it a bad idea per se. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":106,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/template-full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-381","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestir.red\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestir.red\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestir.red\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestir.red\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestir.red\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/bestir.red\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/bestir.red\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/381\/revisions\/720"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestir.red\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestir.red\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bestir.red\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/hawtrey_bay_original_sections.jpg\")
https:\/\/ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz\/delivery\/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE1271793<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bestir.red\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/my_section_original_sale-1024x902.jpg\")
https:\/\/natlib.govt.nz\/records\/20911227<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nSome questions to think about…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Re-imagined information – Concept #1<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
My first experiments<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bestir.red\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/express_concept_1-1024x718.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bestir.red\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/d2095ap-300x254.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/li><\/a><\/figure><\/li><\/ul>Stop! Pause for breath…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What do I really want to do?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
More refinement – Concept #2<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nConcept #3<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe completed piece<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"