High risk business of cultural borrowing

Dick Frizzell's cultural art work

The work of modernist primitivists like Theo Schoon will always be problematic, says Pakeha photographer Mark Adams.

Dick Frizzell's Four Square man with a moko is more than a decade old, but still raises hackles.

Maori material culture, the patterns and forms of tekoteko, taniko and tukutuku, is a tempting source of raw material for artists. But it can also be a source of grief if the artist gets drawn into complex arguments about the ownership and use of such forms.

From Gordon Walters' use of kowhaiwhai rafter patterns as a starting point for his cool abstractions to Dick Frizzell's Four Square man with a moko, the debate quickly starts to sound like people talking past each other.

Frizzell's paintings are more than a decade old, but can still raise hackles.

Waikato University Maori Studies professor Ngahuia Te Awekotuku says she saw a Maori artist wearing a Frizzell moko T-shirt at a recent gallery opening.

"It shows some artists have moved beyond the idea of appropriation and manipulation of our patterns and designs.

"I think disrespectful or manipulative or inappropriate commodifying of Maori design still needs to be challenged. The internet is putting material out there to an audience of millions. We cannot control what becomes of that material, but if we have the opportunity to challenge those people who do those things, we have a responsibility to do so," says Te Awekotuku.

A problem may be that Maori is a metaphorical culture. There are layers upon layers of symbol and meaning which inform the Maori world. For a Maori artist, much of the interest in the piece which uses traditional forms or concepts may be exploring and revealing or concealing such layers.

That is why there are risks in treating the culture as some kind of pattern book, or at the other extreme as a way of inserting symbolic weight.

"In so much Maori art, one engages with customary concepts like whakapapa and whanaungatanga, so people get very protective," Te Awekotuku says.

Robert Jahnke, professor of Maori studies at Massey University and co-ordinator of its Maori visual arts programme, says symbols always come loaded, irrespective of where they are drawn from.

"An interesting thing as far as appropriation is concerned is that Maori adapted European imagery and symbols and incorporated them in Maori spaces, in environments such as meeting houses.

"They also used European forms for flags because there was a perceived iconography associated with these which gave them a transformative ability to overcome foes. So there was a sense of power associated with the symbol.

"I don't see it as appropriation, I see it as a culture coming to terms with new visual iconography.

"We have inherited these images as part of our culture, Maori culture, New Zealand culture, which has a genealogy of battles won, battles lost. When using those images in a contemporary context without awareness of their prior significance and prior use, that's when you get problems."

Jahnke points to Diane Prince's controversial 1995 piece where she invited people to walk on a New Zealand flag.

"Her practice was deliberate and confrontational."

He says the tiki has become topical. "Aimee Ratana has taken the plastic tiki and empowered it with mana in the way she photographed it to transform this object to something of beauty."

Modernism was kickstarted by Picasso's introduction of "primitive" forms from Africa and Polynesia into his painting about 1906.

The first generation of Maori modernists returned the compliment, with artists like Para Matchitt, Arnold Wilson and Muru Walters using modernist practices on traditional forms - breaking away from the spiral.

Pakeha photographer Mark Adams has explored cultural interfaces, including a series on one of our most assertively "Maori" townscapes, Rotorua.

"I am looking there at the cross-cultural context in the form of how power was played out in the new economy imposed by colonial officers. But the other side is the ways in which the main Te Arawa carvers of the late 19th century like Tene Waitere recreated old artforms in new ways, so the cross-cultural appropriation went both ways," Adams says.

"It is not a case of Ngati Pakeha stealing Maori stuff; it is double-edged.

"Just because Maori or indigenous agents are in a colonised position doesn't mean it wipes out their own agency in producing and running their own culture."

Adams says the work of modernist primitivists like Theo Schoon and Gordon Walters, and the Frizzell series, will always be problematic.

"In Gordon Walters' case the quality and beauty of the work is self-evident, and if he had been engaged in an exchange with Maori artists or elders, and consulted, maybe we would have a different approach."

Adams is not convinced by critical arguments that there is a space between the two cultures where artists can operate.

"It boils down to good manners," Adams says. "What I do is engage with what is here, with our situation here. That means you talk about other cultures' stuff, but you don't want to own or appropriate it. You go and ask, and people can tell you to bugger off."