Artwork information

When Adams first exhibited his Rotorua works in the 1980s, they were accompanied by a bilingual catalogue containing a statement from the artist: ‘The photographs represent a subjective response to the region, its geomorphology and the conjuncture formed of the cultures inhabiting it; the Polynesian and the colonial European. The evolving power relationship between these two is encapsulated in artifacts which convey, in an ironical and metaphorical sense, the historicity of the place and by inference, of the country as a whole.’

Adams was generally critical of Pākehā attitudes towards Māori culture at that time, yet also recognised that ‘Adopting an elitist analytical stance or citing individual instances of apparent chauvinism can also be risky.’ Instead, he observed that frequently within his subject matter, ‘A labyrinth of relationships of various forms can be revealed, so the intention has also been to account for and to try to unravel and comprehend some of this complexity.’

Commenting on what attracted him to Rotorua, Adams later noted: ‘It’s amazing that you can walk around the city and see on the streets fantastic work by Tene Waitere and Anaha Te Rahui. I was very drawn to both the works and their contexts of contemporary street furniture, gardens, car parks, and so on.’1

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Sarah Farrar, Mark Adams: A Survey | He Kohinga Whakaahua, 2025