Artwork Information

In Māori culture, the Manaia is a spiritual guardian and carrier of supernatural powers. Usually depicted as a figure with the head of a bird, body of a man and tail of a fish, the Manaia acts as a provider and protector over sky, earth and sea.

In Dick Frizzell’s modernist-style painting the Manaia is fractured, difficult to make out. The artist frequently employs painting styles of the past. Here, he applies Cubism’s multi-perspective approach to a mythical character which, as a chimera, is an entity already made from different parts.