The mighty class of '66

The Aukaha exhibition includes Ralph Hotere's Baby Iron.

In 1966, a group of young artists hired the St Paul's Methodist Centre hall in Hamilton and mounted a show called Contemporary Maori Painting and Sculpture.

Many are still part of the country's art life: Ray (Sandy) Adsett, Clive Arlidge, Fred Graham, Ralph Hotere, Para Matchitt, Elizabeth Mountain (better known today as former Te Waka Toi chairwoman Elizabeth Ellis), Selwyn Murupaenga, Cliff Whiting, Arnold Wilson.

A few, including John Ford and Freda Rankin Kawharu, have died.

Much of the work in that show went on to be shown later that year at Canterbury Museum at the request of the entrepreneurial Buck Nin, who added some works by himself and his South Island contemporaries.

Now Waiuku-based sculptor Fred Graham has reconvened the class of '66 at Waikato Art Museum.

Graham says the idea for Aukaha: 40 Years On came to him this year when he was in Vancouver, supporting an exhibition of contemporary Maori and Pacific northwest coast art.

"I thought these younger ones should be reminded of how it all started 40 years ago," he says.

"It is also 40 years since Dame Te Ata came to the throne" (as Arikinui or Maori queen).

Graham is from Tainui, and has known Dame Te Ata since in high school in Hamilton. Aukaha was a way for her generation of Maori artists to contribute to the celebrations surrounding the 40th anniversary Koroneihana hui.

Most of the artists had been through Ardmore teachers' training college and worked as art advisers for the Education Department under Gordon Tovey, an inspirational figure who transformed the teaching of art in New Zealand schools.

Graham was one of the first advisers, trying out Tovey's ideas in Northland schools.

"I first came across Selwyn Muru when I was teaching in 1952. He was in standard one in Te Hapua."

Some artists, such as Matchitt, had had solo shows, but Hamilton was the first time they were able to get together and show their work as a Maori group.

"We did not feel we were involved in a movement, we were just making art and supporting each other," says Graham.

All the artists were exploring concepts of modernism, the primitives reappropriating Picasso as 60 years earlier Picasso appropriated "primitive" art from Africa and Oceania to make the breakthroughs that led to Cubism.

Graham says what drove many of the artists was a feeling that "we felt the stories we held dear as a culture had to be retold".

In the 1960s, many of the Maori stories in print were written and illustrated by Pakeha. Maori had to get their stories back.

They also wanted to break with tradition, while staying true to culture.

"The greatest piece of carving in my opinion is the black pataka from Apanui in Auckland museum. But we can't go on repeating the template of the template of the template. We have to move on," says Graham.

Whiting says working in schools had a major influence on his art.

"Gordon Tovey was working on bringing Maori art into the curriculum in primary and secondary schools. A lot of my own work was trying to find ways to do that," Whiting says.

"There had been the traditional approach, the Apirana Ngata approach, which was a revival of marae art, the sort of things you had in meeting houses. We were dealing with all the arts, Pakeha, Maori, anything else."

He says working with children opened some doors.

"When you started to look at making and developing patterns, all sorts of interesting ideas would come out. You look at seashells or leaves, and children cotton on to how to develop that into kowhaiwhai [rafter patterns], how to develop symbols and forms.

"Then they evolved stories to go with it, which fitted with the Maori idea that everything had to have a story."

Whiting says Tovey encouraged his specialists to incorporate music, rhythm and poetry into teaching practice, and to take the children into the natural environment.

"Up to that time most things in schools were done inside the four walls of the classroom."

Most of the artists spent much of their working lives teaching at secondary or tertiary level, only getting a chance to concentrate on their own work when they retired.

Whiting says he doesn't measure success by gallery shows.

"We're about whakapapa, not about galleries. Galleries are showplaces. Our meeting houses are our showplaces."

Whiting says he is always trying to integrate many forms into his work.

"When we deal with marae, we deal with people, with kaikorero (orators), haka, whakairo (carving), whakapapa (genealogy), we are dealing with a whole range of things."

Many of the artists have also done a lot of work in collaborative settings.

"It is different working for an iwi or hapu or group of people. I can point to any number of places where there are marae out in paddocks which have amazing stories, they are amazing works of art. They reflect the history they are about and the struggles of the people.

"That is not part of the dialogue that comes into the world of art schools," Whiting says.

His contribution to Aukaha is an overt tribute to both Tovey and to Pine Taiapa, who did so much to ensure the continuation of traditional Maori arts.

Painter Murupaenga says the endorsement of leading revival carvers such as Taiapa and Piri Poutapu was important to the younger artists.

"All of us felt we had to make peace with them," says Murupaenga.

"They told us to seek out the new paths."

Aukaha: 40 Years On at the Waikato Museum, Hamilton, until July 9