Raised in her grandparents’ home in Te Rohe Pōtae King Country, Hiria Anderson-Mita (Rereahu, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Apakura) describes this exhibition of fourteen new oil paintings as “a return to the ancestral landscapes that have shaped who I am.”
“As a teenager, I lived at Puketarata in the Waikato. I rode farm bikes across the paddocks, went eeling in the streams, and walked across the hills. It was my home then, but at the time I didn’t realise my tūpuna had lived there too a century earlier.
As a kid of the early 1980s, life at Ōtewa Marae formed my identity and my cultural perspective. The people there were all my aunties, uncles, grandparents and cousins. I thought this whenua was my whole world. But the networks are wider, the connections stronger, and the rolling landscapes in my paintings have more than one story to tell.
The tracts of farmland in these artworks hold the DNA and stories of my ancestors. Their ridges and valleys are layered with the pā sites of my tūpuna; connections that survey pegs and ownership papers can never sever.
In fact those pegs and papers are reference points for rediscovery.
Through researching Māori Land Court records and field books made by 19th Century Government Surveyor William Cussen – alongside maps, archaeological files, photographs, oral histories and the living landscape itself – I am tracing the footprints of my tūpuna.
Each painting in this exhibition describes and locates a site of history and connection within the rohe of Ōtewa, Rangitoto Tuhua and the surrounding pā of Ngāti Maniapoto and Rereahu.
The pā tuna, the kohatu, the maunga, and the awa I paint were once sources of sustenance for entire communities. I want to make them visible once more; to bring them into the light. And to reinsert our knowledge and our presence into the whenua from which we have been separated by pen and politics.
I have been guided by ancestors who still reside within me. My paintings are my journey home.”
Hiria Anderson-Mita (b. 1974) lives and works in Ōtorohanga. She received her MFA from Whitecliffe College of Art and Design in 2016.
Her work was included in ‘Toi Tu Toi Ora, Contemporary Māori Art’ at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki in 2020. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘What We’re Doing, Where We Are’, New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Wellington (2024), ‘Kuhu Mai’, Te Uru Waitakere, Auckland (2023) and ‘Āmio’, Toi Tauranga Art Gallery (2023).
Her work can be seen in ‘What We Choose to Remember’ at Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland until 13 December 2025.
Photography: Kallan MacLeod
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ - Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga - Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ - Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga - Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Ōtewa Pā - Into the Future
2025
oil on linen
500mm H x 400mm W (frame)
HA-2025-12
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ - Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga - Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Puketarata Rd, No. 2
2025
oli on canvas
300mm H x 300mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Ōtewa - My Mother's Ancestral Home
2025
oil on canvas
300mm H x 300mm W
HA-2025-17
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga – Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
The Sheep Run on Paewhenua
2025
oil on linen
180mm H x 240mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Puketarata Pā
2025
oil on linen
180mm H x 240mm W
HA-2025-21
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga – Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Turamoe Pā, Ōtuaoroa (Te Kooti's Lookout)
2025
oil on linen
200mm H x 260mm W (frame)
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Hikurangi Pā
2025
oil on linen
200mm H x 260mm W (frame)
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga – Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Ōtuaoroa
2025
oil on canvas
1015mm H x 760mm W
HA-2025-09
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Õtuaoroa
2025
oil on canvas
1015mm H x 760mm W
HA-2025-09
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Ōtuaoroa (detail)
2025
oil on canvas
1015mm H x 760mm W
HA-2025-09
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga – Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga – Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Ōtuaoroa
2025
oil on canvas
1015mm H x 760mm W
HA-2025-09
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga – Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Rangitoto Tuhua
2025
oil on linen
410mm H x 500mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Rangitoto Tuhua (detail)
2025
oil on linen
410mm H x 500mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Puketarata Pā S16/35
2025
oil on linen
600mm H x 800mm W
HA-2025-11
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Puketarata Pā S16/35 (detail)
2025
oil on linen
600mm H x 800mm W
HA-2025-11
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Kūpapa Pā, Ōtuaoroa, the home of Rereahu
2025
oil on canvas
525mm H x 1025mm W (frame)
HA-2025-08
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga – Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Hīnaki a Rautāwhiri / Te Awa a Tāne Pā Tuna
2025
oil on board
580mm Dia
HA-2025-10
Hiria Anderson-Mita
Hīnaki a Rautāwhiri / Te Awa a Tāne Pā Tuna
2025
oil on board
580mm Dia
HA-2025-10
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga – Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view
Hiria Anderson-Mita
End of Service
2025
oil on linen
400mm H x 300mm W
HA-2025-13
Hiria Anderson-Mita
The Dishes Washed
2025
oil on canvas
320mm H x 265mm W (frame)
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hiria Anderson-Mita
PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga – Finding my way Home
2025
Installation view