Taurima – a new series of light installations on Auckland’s Elliott Street - will become a Matariki Festival must-see because the crochet-like neon artworks floating above the street are spectacular, and because they uncover the street’s long culinary history.
Aucklanders and visitors will see pātaka kai [food storehouse] symbolism suspended above the street in quirky fluoro-neon art created by Lissy Robinson-Cole (Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Hine), Rudi Robinson-Cole (Waikato, Ngaruahine, Ngāti Pāoa, Te Arawa), Ataahua Papa (Ngāti Korokī Kahukura, Ngāti Mahuta) and Angus Muir Design.
Taurima marks the street’s origins in hospitality. In 1987, archaeologists found Elliott Street was likely to have been a place of gathering food all along. They found evidence indicating people harvested and provided food here for the best part of 500 years.
Excavations found three ketu [wooden digging sticks] once used as gardening tools, fragments of harakeke [flax] for weaving, fragments of other wooden tools and a shell midden.
