Wastelands

Graham’s sculpture Wastelands, situates a carved pātaka (storehouse) on wheels implying mobility, transience and separation from homeland. As a raised architectural structure on poles, the pātaka was traditionally used by Māori as a house for food and treasures, often bearing particularly ornate carving itself across the lintel, indicative of the wealth and prestige of the iwi (tribe). Instead of using traditional carved patterns, Graham covers his pātaka in an abundance of eels, in direct reference to the food source and reverence given to the natural world of his Tainui people. In 1858 the New Zealand Government would pass a ‘wastelands’ act as part of the colonial project to shift the definitions of large swathes of swamp land, a rich

resource for Māori to ‘waste’. The act thereby claimed these vast swamps as unoccupiable land redefining them as territories of wetland to be drained and turned towards agriculture. Graham’s dramatic presentation of this storehouse of eels is a reminder that for Māori these eel-preserves were as valuable as goldmines.

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