KEY POINTS:
Surrounded by art, I'm facing a lustrous sea view framed by an enormous carving. So what grabs my eye? Two words glaring from the centre of one painting: "Black bum".
I can't overstate how much I wished they hadn't as I choke down a guffaw. Great start, the woman responsible for putting them there had just welcomed me into her home and was standing right behind me.
We had shared no more than polite greetings and all I knew was that she is an accomplished and deeply spiritual Maori artist who counts the likes of Tame Iti as a mate and has become an international voice for indigenous art, whereas I'm a 40-something white chap and a journalist to boot.
In some circles that earns me an instant two-word title: The Enemy. Tracey Tawhiao finishes my laugh for me: "Yeah, it did say 'black bumper'. I just chopped a bit off. Would you like a cuppa tea?" Oh, sweet relief. Time out for tea meant a chance for a proper, and this time po-faced, look. Hmmm ... yep, it says "black bum" all right ... in bold type.
Hang on, it's a newspaper headline - and surrounded by panels of hand-drawn Maori motifs broken up by more, but much smaller, news cuttings. Even my limited art knowledge suspects there are layers of meaning here. I'm being artfully manipulated. But as people artier than me are starting to notice, it's a technique that's laconic in the classic New Zealand style which erodes your defences until, before you know it, you're swapping ideas on some historically difficult subjects.
But as is also our way, it wasn't until Tawhiao began attracting some heavy-hitting attention in Europe and the United States that many of them finally noticed. The tea arrives and we sit at the paint-spattered kitchen table.
Tawhiao laughs again as I scratch at a red blotch: "Yeah, sorry about that. I'm always having to scrub it clean." It doesn't matter at all, this is a working space as well as a home. We're deep in west Auckland's bushclad Laingholm, looking out over the Manukau Harbour, and maybe it's the relaxed remoteness but there's a DIY vibe in the air that fits its owner well. Art is everywhere. Not all of it hers - the carving hanging in the seaward window is by George Nuku and the graffiti-scrawled ranch slider at the entrance is a parting gift from a guest to a recent party.
This is a welcoming place. As with those two words on the back wall, you're enticed in and invited to consider the view at your leisure. Much like meeting Tawhiao really. You start with the smiling, 40-year-old teamaker before gradually discovering the painter, the filmmaker, the performance poet, the lecturer, the mother, the artists' co-operative director, the music manager, the lawyer, the hip-hop fan, the writer, the traveller and the passionate Ngai te Rangi, Whakatohea and Tuwharetoa daughter.
She wears as many hats as Imelda Marcos had shoes, while reaching for new ones whenever the inclination strikes - and all in a manner that forsakes convention in favour of anti-rules. Take the day she first felt an urge to write: "I had no idea how you did it, I just remember sitting down and thinking, 'I'm going to write a short story'. I started in the morning, then when I looked up it was dark. That was so satisfying. I've done a few now, but none have been published, I can't bear the idea of it."
Then there's the day she applied for a creative writing course at Auckland University: "I had a few of my stories, but then I found out I had to submit three poems as well. I'd never written one, ever. I was with a friend and she said: 'Quick, write some now.' So we went over the road to Albert Park, sat down and I did it. I got in the course, but I still didn't feel like I understood what a poem was.
"Then one day, I was in the class and [Samoan poet and now-retired course lecturer] Albert Wendt just pointed at what I'd written and said: 'This is you. This is a poem. It's about things that have been put into you and you must accept them whole-heartedly.' When I got that, I was away. Starting with no rules means they can evolve naturally."
Moving into gear swiftly, she evolved from dabbling to reciting and then to reciting in front of her own visuals. Audience requests for copies of her poems saw several leak out in the literary world, where they became unpublished study material in Auckland University's English department. Hearing that was "sickmaking", she says. "Poems are always evolving, changing.
Once it's in print it all over, it's stuck there on a page." If her approach appears self-effacing to the point of self-indulgence - and she certainly hasn't gone out of her way to court attention - it's because she's quietly working through her own issues without any real need for an audience.
Brought up in early-80s Invercargill, it wasn't until she moved away in 1986, after her parents chased a job overseas, that Tawhiao started making sense of her hometown, what it represented, and what it meant to be Maori. A BA in classical studies at Otago introduced Tawhiao to ancient Greek philosophy before one of those now-familiar urges suggested a law degree.
"I guess I was operating as a solo woman, doing what I wanted. But being bought up in Invercargill meant I had quite a low opinion of myself. It wasn't intentionally racist, but they were more into their own, there weren't many Maori at school, so I learned how to keep myself safe from all that, from prejudice and assumptions.
"Law may have even been a safety mechanism, I just wanted to know things - things like how come my grandparents and all of my family were so poor despite having been quite majestic landowners at one time, and how power works in this country. Then, once I learned that, I realised there was no way I wanted to be a lawyer. I knew I'd always be working for Maori and it would be very depressing and I had my own children by then, Ruby and Awhina, so I couldn't see how I could give my best to a job like that and also give to family life. I knew I would have got too involved. So, I decided to do something that was identifying and kind of empowering and where I could be at home."
Law 0 - Art 1. But the issue became how to express herself comfortably: "It's not attractive to get angry, even if you are - just ask all my old boyfriends. When I happen to find out a whole lot of terrible things, I don't want to be informed by those terrible things.
There's a difference between knowing them and letting them affect you adversely. There's a trick to doing that, I think. So my paintings are a way to say those things without being horrible. I know people look at issues like land confiscations in a strange way, Maori people are perceived in a strange way. But that's fear. I look at that as a shame, a misunderstanding. It causes a lot of conflict. Instead, I like to approach art as a great perception-changer."
Tawhiao had already been a painter-poet-writer for several years when she went to visit her grandparents on Matakana Island in the Bay of Plenty in 2002. As she could handle a brush, she offered to paint over the newspaper that decorated the walls of their home. It was like Archimedes jumping in the bath - a lick of paint in the right place, a backward step, and she noticed how covering over part of a headline totally changed its meaning.
"Then everything I'd done came together. I got that one good idea and several other little things came together at once, it was a realisation. Before then it felt like I had nothing to go on, I was developing ideas about things like colour, but now I could be informed by the newspaper. It was a collaboration, not a solo effort. I was co-operating with whoever had written the news, done the headline, laid out the pictures. I felt together with it, I didn't have to make it all up myself. There's something very draining about being the originator all the time."
Of course, what she does to the newspaper is less-than-flattering, she's subverting a medium often accused of being unsympathetic to causes close to her heart. So there's some risk in submitting herself to this story - the empire can always strike back - even if her spirit of co-operation has worked both ways.
Several years of hard work earlier this decade saw her exhibiting, appearing in publications such as the 2006 book Taiawhio: Conversations with Contemporary Maori Artists and even appearing in support of indigenous art in New York. It was enough to secure Tawhiao a respectable place within the art community, but it took an Italian arthouse magazine's curiosity toward Maori culture to put her in front of a far larger audience.
In 2004, Case de Abitare commissioned fashion designer Lise Strathdee, who had lived in Italy for about 20 years, to assemble an 80-page spread on contemporary Maori design. After a few chance encounters, Strathdee ended up knocking on Tawhiao's door in search of sculptor George Nuku, one of the artists associated with the House of Taonga, a multi-media artistic co-operative.
Many cups of teas and some long distance negotiations later, Tawhiao was art-directing a large chunk of the project herself. Some sketched ideas she sent to Italy were even deemed good enough to use in their original state. "She just blew them away," says Strathdee, now based in Kaipara. "The Milanese never met her, but they just had this connection.
From the moment they read the incredible story of Tracey's genealogy they were thrilled to have her onboard. Case is a classically styled magazine - for them to put a shot of a marae on their cover is amazing and I think it showed the respect they had for Tracey, they love it when they come in contact with an authentic artist."
Strathdee says that issue, which featured Tawhiao's art as well as her home, gained a cult status in Europe. It attracted the attention of influential trend-forecasting website wgsn.com and led to photo spreads appearing in several other countries. "That magazine was a fantastic achievement for her," she says. "Tracey is a very modern, urban woman and she's putting it out there while fighting for indigenous cultures and people. You can't help but be converted, she's a naturally evolving volcano of ideas."
Huhana Smith, artist and senior art curator at Te Papa, agrees: "Tracey has found a way of re-articulating what's in front of people's faces in a very persuasive way. It's a remarkable gift, literally transforming media and ideas in a way that's lighthearted, yet also hard-hitting. That can be very compelling, so I think she's in a very exciting place right now and I know she's only going to get better and better."
Ngahiraka Mason, Auckland Art Gallery's indigenous art curator, first met Tawhiao after she'd written a poem supporting the right to protest during the furore over Tame Iti and Te Kaha's theft of the Urewera mural in 1997. She lauds Tawhiao's energy and passion but expects her work to continue to mature.
"Some things aren't always clear at the time when art is made. If Hone Tuwhare hadn't written his poems in the 50s and 60s we probably wouldn't understand his greatness in 2008. The downside of the 21st century is that everything is instant and everyone is looking for the next star. But good things are for forever, sometimes we just have to wait to realise how good those things really are."
As for Tawhiao, well, she explains herself her own way: "I am an artist from the caves. While New Zealanders are still trying to accumulate identity, my identity is carved in stone and has been forever and a day ... this is why I am so ardent that what you see in my art is only half of what you will see once you know who you are as a human being. If you cannot see the miracle of life then you cannot speak painting language or poetry language. Both of these languages are revolutionary languages. I think we should have a day off every year to think all about that."
And I know just the painting to get you started.
* Tracey Tawhiao hosts a joint exhibition, Revelations, with Kura te Waru Rewiri at Ferner Galleries, Parnell, from July 14-27.
