KEY POINTS:
Creating shows for public galleries is a tricky business. Walls must be filled, schedules developed, theses constructed to tie together groups of work. The problem is more pronounced in small galleries, where the theme may need to be established with only a few works.
There can be spectacular failures, such as last year's Mystic Truths at the Auckland Art Gallery, where a moderately interesting notion became lost under a mountain of mediocre tat.
Te Tuhi in Pakuranga is tackling a big subject this year as a two-part research project on land. The first part, Land Wars: Shift, is on show now, with part two, Build, due in May.
"Who has control over land and who doesn't? What are the changing circumstances for land use?" asks the flyer.
Curator Emma Budgen says: "I was thinking about contemporary tensions in New Zealand around land."
Leaky buildings. Asylum seekers. The Foreshore and Seabed Act. Police raids on Ngai Tuhoe and their associates. It all goes into the stew.
"I was also interested in that line between art and activism," she says.
It may be a thin line, with blue, or in the case of Tuhoe, ninja black at the edge. Chaz Doherty's contribution to The Land: Shift is a short DVD film prepared for showing during a Waitangi Tribunal hearing at Ruatahuna, deep in the Urewera Ranges. It opens with black-and-white images of ancestors, taken when they could still be said to have their mana motuhake, even if under threat.
Then follows footage of the Tribunal arriving in Ruatoki on a horse-drawn wagon, met by hundreds of people doing a haka. By the confiscation line, the point past which all the fertile flat land sloping towards the coast was taken from Tuhoe in 1867, a car burns.
"The background audio is fire. The directive that day was, 'tuku te riri, vent your anger, vent your frustration'. It was not about welcoming a group of people as manuhiri [guests]. They were our enemy," says Doherty.
The exhibition includes more pictures and carvings of leaders who fought in the Land Wars alongside Rewi Maniapoto at Orakau in 1864 and with Te Kooti through the 1870s.
"After that, there is the transition from then to now, still adamant that we will fight to maintain our tino rangatiratanga and mana motuhake," Doherty says.
"The work was made for Tuhoe people, it was not made for a gallery. But being the media it is, I can stick it in my iPod and take it anywhere."
Doherty's work was originally shown in Te Whai o Te Motu, a wharenui in Ruatahuna opened by Te Kooti in 1888 and carved by Doherty's great-great-grandfather, Te Whare Kotua. The wharenui was built at the end of the Land Wars, when Tuhoe had been decimated by battle, disease and famine, and it was a way Te Kooti brought the community back together and built it up.
"When it was presented in that wharenui, as a Tuhoe artist, that's about as good as it gets," Doherty says.
In the next room is another video work by Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, from Palestine and Iran respectively, on the occupied territories.
There are more disturbing images, of the "security" walls turning the territory into a series of open-air prisons and of rubble where interviewees' houses used to be.
In part of what seems to be a trend, Palestinians have turned to the art gallery as one of the few places in the Western world where they can tell their stories.
Another outlet is the internet. You don't have to go to Te Tuhi to see British artist Heath Bunting's border crossing guide at www.irational.org/heath/borderxing/home.html, which tracks his efforts to document methods of crossing borders within Europe without papers.
Border crossing is also the theme of the work by American Robert Ransick - plans for a shelter near the United States-Mexico border, so people crossing illegally do not need to break into farmhouses to get the water and food they need to continue their journey.
Coming back to New Zealand, Wayne Barrar's photographs look at another sort of border crossing; the elaborate quarantine "bio-security" set-ups our scientists have developed to prevent unwanted plants and animals entering the country.
Sometimes theme shows may just be an excuse by curators to show what they think is great work and, in this case, the star of the show may be Bouncy Marae by Inez Crawford. It's what it sounds like, a wharenui built bouncy castle-style, the outside brown, the inside fleshy pink.
Crawford made it as her fourth-year graduation work for the Otago Polytechnic School of Art.
"As a kid, I thought my marae at Te Kaha was a castle, like in the fairytales," says Crawford, who is Te Whanau a Apanui.
She sees herself following the path of Maori artists who have challenged tradition but continue to have a dialogue with it.
Getting the marae built was a big investment for an art student but Crawford was confident she had a major work.
"And if no one wants it, I'll have it at my house to keep my nieces and nephews happy."
EXHIBITION
What: Land Wars: Shift
Where and when: Te Tuhi, 13 Reeves Rd, Pakuranga, to April 20
