Join us for a New Zealand Sign Language tour of Ngā Taonga Tūturu: Treasured Māori Portraits, created especially for Deaf visitors.

Led by Deaf artist Abbie Twiss, with supporting interpretation by Platform Interpreting NZ, this 90-minute tour invites you to experience the exhibition through NZSL and explore the significance of tūpuna representations within te ao Māori.

This is a free event. Bookings are essential and places are limited to 15 people. Booking also allows us to contact you if there are any changes to the tour date or time.

This tour is part of Matariki ahunga nui, a full day of fun, free activities at the Gallery celebrating the rising of the Matariki star cluster and the start of the Māori New Year.

 

Where to meet

Please meet in the Level 1 foyer, just outside the lifts, where we will gather before walking together to Te Kawau Gallery for the tour.

 

Exhibition

Ngā Taonga Tūturu: Treasured Māori Portraits brings together whakairo and oil paintings from the Gallery’s collection, offering insight into the importance of ancestral representation within te ao Māori.

‘Ngā taonga’ means many treasures, while ‘tūturu’ refers to something permanent, true and original. The exhibition considers the cultural values embodied and expressed through these taonga from a te ao Māori perspective.

 

Before you visit

If this is your first time visiting the Gallery, we encourage you to watch our NZSL Welcome video before you arrive.

Please note the Gallery will be very busy on the day as this tour is part of the wider Matariki ahunga nui programme. A kapa haka performance will take place on the forecourt from 10am to 10:30am.

The tour will finish in Te Kawau Gallery just before Pīata | A Taane Mete performance begins in the Grey Gallery below. We are expecting a  large audience to gather in Te Kawau Gallery between 11:45am and 12pm to watch the performance. If you are not planning to stay for the performance, please exit the gallery space before 12pm. 

Make a day of it

Come for the NZSL tour, then stay and enjoy the full day of free Matariki activities across the Gallery. Matariki ahunga nui is a chance to gather, celebrate and welcome the Māori New Year through art, performance and shared experiences.

Abbie Twiss

Abbie Twiss has worked as an artist, art teacher, curator and interpreter across Melbourne and Aotearoa. Raised in a creative Auckland household, she was surrounded by art from an early age, including the work of her father, sculptor Greer Twiss, whose drawings and sculptures helped shape her visual understanding of the world. Comics, newspapers, books and pop culture imagery also became important influences, informing her interest in narrative, identity, politics and consumer culture. 

Twiss studied Design at Carrington Polytechnic, then graduated from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 1998 with a BFA majoring in painting. She has exhibited regularly since 1994 and works across mixed media, painting, illustration, portraiture, design, signwriting, sculpture and recycled materials. Her practice often explores memory, Deaf identity, social experience and the strangeness of everyday life. Twiss has also completed commissioned works, including a large mural in 2013. 

 

Gottfried Lindauer

Gottfried Lindauer was born in Pilsen, Czech Republic, and professionally trained at the Academy Fine Arts in Vienna. In 1874 he migrated to Aotearoa New Zealand. Lindauer's first portraits of Māori were painted in Nelson though he worked in many parts of New Zealand before establishing a studio in Auckland in the late 1870s. Here he met businessman Henry Partridge (1848–1931), who over the next 30-plus years commissioned portraits of eminent Māori as well as large-scale depictions of Māori life and customs.