Spirit of Aloha

Ko ēnei mātātuhi raumata me te tārai e pātata ana a Te Hokioi 2008, he toi nō te whakaaturanga 2008 a Brett Graham, ko Campaign Rooms i hangaia ai e te ringatoi tētahi papa taunga whakatakune hei urupare ki te whakaekeeke a ngā pirihimana i te hapori o Ngāi Tūhoe i Rūātoki – e mōhiotia ana hei ngā Whakaekeeke i a Te Urewera. Ko tā te ringa toi i roto i ēnei mātātuhi he hura i āna whakaritenga mō ngā ‘pū hei whakamōtī huri, huri noa’. Ko āna mahere mō te whakatuatea he whakaatu i ngā pū pakanga a tauiwi – he rererangi whakatoke tuku pahū, ko te Hoata Davy Crockett, koia rā te hoata karihi iti rawa o te ao. Ko te whakaurunga o ngā hoahoa a te Māori, a te Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa, a Te Waenga-Rāwhiti, he whakaatu i te kaupapa o te titiro ki iwi kē ānō nei he kaiwhakatuma. Ko tā tēnei kāhui toi he hura i ngā pū pakanga hei urupare ki ngā momo whakaekeeke – ā-hoia, ā-ture, ā-rūkahu – e pā ana ki ngā motika a ngā iwi taketake o Aotearoa, o te Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa whānui.

These screenprints and the nearby sculpture Te Hokioi 2008 are from Brett Graham’s 2008 exhibition Campaign Rooms, a make-believe terrorist headquarters created in response to the 2007 police raid on the Ngāi Tūhoe community of Ruatoki – commonly known as the Urewera Raids. In the prints the artist lays bare his plans for ‘weapons of mass destruction’. His blueprints for terror appropriate settler weaponry – stealth bombers and the Davy Crockett Missile, the world’s smallest nuclear warhead. Their infusion with Māori, Pacific and Middle Eastern patterns plays on the ‘othering’ of peoples as terrorists. As a set, these works provide the necessary arsenal to respond to different forms of attack – military, legislative and propaganda – on the rights of Indigenous peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand and in the wider Pacific.

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