Hiria Anderson (Rereahu, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Apakura) was raised in her grandparents’ home in Te Rohe Pōtae King Country and today lives in her whānau homestead in Ōtorohanga.
Her practice is focused upon painting the everyday lives of the people in her community; environments that reveal the nuanced connections between Māori culture and 21st century life.
Writing in the Summer 2020 issue of Art Collector Lucinda Bennett suggests that “furthermore, in depicting the everyday lives of her community [Anderson’s] paintings interrogate the history of representation of Māori in European art, gently shifting the viewpoint from outside looking in, to inside, looking out”.
Anderson herself writes:
“Phrased by our ancestors, ‘Te Ao Hurihuri’ literally means ‘everchanging world’. But the term goes deeper in its reference to Māori cosmology and whakapapa, as well as to the modernity that, for better or worse, has impacted Te Ao Māori in these times of COVID.
The exhibition subtitle “At the end of the Beginning” is a line spoken by Winston Churchill. Addressing his nation at a pivotal moment three years before the end of World War Two, Churchill said: “It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps … the end of the beginning”.
Just as World War Two defined Churchill’s generation, COVID-19 is our pivotal moment in global history. Even bearing in mind the fading of collective memory it will define us until the last person to experience these times is dead. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 faded from collective consciousness also … until now.
I zoom in to my own little world and I try to describe in paint what I see happening around me. The paintings I make are impressions of pre- and post-lockdown life. They are quiet moments in time, but they arrive on the back of life-altering moments where people are forced into change and there is no turning back. The only way is forward.
Life on earth sometimes depends on a forceful or catastrophic act of regeneration to begin again.
Te Ao Hurihuri.”
Photography by Kallan MacLeod
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri
2020
oil on canvas
500mm H x 400mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Kōrero tuku iho
2020
oil on linen
1150mm H x 760mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
Moko, where's Nanny's phone?
2020
oil on canvas
250mm H x 200mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Tukutuku Swatch No. 1
2020
oil on canvas
250mm Hx 250mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
Whakatika te whare
2020
oil on canvas
200mm H x 250mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Intimate Dissection
2020
oil on canvas
355mm H x 280mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
Behind the Shed
2020
oil on canvas
200mm H x 250mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Tukutuku Swatch no.2 - a
2020
oil on canvas
200mm H x 300mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
Stormy in Waikato
2020
oil on canvas
510mm H x 405mm W
HIRIA ANDERSON
Whanaungatanga
2020
oil on canvas
405mm H x 505mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Wednesday Morning on Tūrongo St
2020
oil on canvas
410mm H x 305mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
A View from the Redshed, Waitomo
2020
oil on canvas
790mm H x 635mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Uncle's Setup, Kauta
2020
oil on canvas
485mm H x 635mm W (frame)
DOWSE ART MUSEUM COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
I'm in Hot Water
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 255mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Storm Water
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 255mm W
HIRIA ANDERSON
Tā Moko
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 230mm W
HIRIA ANDERSON
Renal Fishing Trip with Bussy, Nay Nay and the boiz
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 350mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Mahia te mahi
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 255mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
Visiting Hours
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 405mm W
HIRIA ANDERSON
Breathe
2020
oil on canvas
1150mm H x 765m W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
That'll do it
2020
oil on linen
915mm H x 610mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Wash your hands bro
2020
oil on canvas
300mm H x 250mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Softbones and Watercress
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 305mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri - At the end of the Beginning
December 2020
Installation View
HIRIA ANDERSON
Juicy Fruit
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 230mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Tino Rangatiratanga
2020
oil on canvas
305mm H x 230mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION
HIRIA ANDERSON
Te Ao Hurihuri
2020
oil on canvas
500mm H x 400mm W
PRIVATE COLLECTION