Nancy is at the door. An older Pākehā woman, she has called into the Tim Melville Gallery in central Auckland to discuss a group visit to the exhibition Mind That Māori. “I came to look. But I’m a bit intimidated by the Māori at the entrance,” she says.
“Good,” Tim Melville replies quietly, with a gentle laugh. Melville (Te Arawa, Te Atiawa) is not setting out to intimidate anyone. He says his gallery is a conduit to the artists who will “show us the way”.
Showing us the way at the entrance is the “intimidating” sculpture in question, Kaitiaki: an angular warrior in cast bronze, about a metre high, proud on his plinth. The sculptor, Chris Bailey (Ngāti Hako, Ngāti Paoa, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Porou), was one of 12 Māori artists in the show that ran in February and March.
Mind That Māori, the work that inspired the title of the group exhibition, is a crocheted statement in black and white by Lissy Robinson-Cole (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Kahu) and Rudi Robinson-Cole (Ngāti Paoa, Ngāruahine, Ngāti Makirangi, Ngāti Tu, Te Arawa). It’s in stark contrast to their vast neon wool sculpture Wharenui Harikoa (House of Joy) that attracted more than 40,000 people in 100 days to Waikato Museum recently. “‘Mind’ that Māori or ‘watch out for’?” asks Melville. The art may be black and white wool, but interpretation lies in the grey area. “You’re seduced into wanting to touch it and find out what it is because it’s so lovely, soft, gentle, and then you receive the message almost by osmosis.
“We are brought together by artists doing their job.”
The Tim Melville Gallery is the only Māori-owned dealer gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau. “I might just be the most high profile at the moment, but there are others coming up and there is hope for the future. They’re coming.”
He pauses to consider the notion he is capturing the zeitgeist. “These artists have been here for decades. They just haven’t been seen. There hasn’t been a place for emerging Māori artists to be seen in a commercial way.”
But this is indeed a “moment”, he says. “Like [artist] Brett Graham said, the best art in this country is being made by Māori artists. And it’s true. Much of the best artwork being made at the moment is by Māori and Pacific artists.”
Changing the landscape
Māori artists are the “quiet wave that just keeps rolling in”, says artist Elizabeth Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou).
“It’s good for Māori, but also the whole of New Zealand. We go with positives. It’s really important. None of us are negative people. It clashes with the whole idea of creativity, building our image.”
The now Whangārei-based Ellis consults to the Wairau Māori Art Gallery, part of that city’s exciting new Hundertwasser Art Centre and the first dedicated public Māori art gallery in the country. Melville was instrumental in its establishment and is a trustee.
Ellis was chair of Haerewa, Māori advisers to the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, for 25 years before she and six others resigned, calling out colonisation in Aotearoa’s cultural institutions just before the gallery opened Toi Tū Toi Ora in January 2021.
Toi Tū was the largest exhibition in the 132-year history of the gallery and only the second to showcase Māori artists in four decades. It was curated by Nigel Borell (Pirirakau, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Te Whakatōhea), one of those who also walked out.
The “quiet wave” nevertheless gained considerable momentum with Toi Tū, which saw the entire gallery filled with the work of Māori artists. “It changed the landscape,” says Melville. “I wouldn’t have had the confidence to realise that there was interest. Nigel has done a service to all of us.
“[Artists] who had been working quietly in the background for decades suddenly were in arguably the best gallery in New Zealand, the most important gallery. And the calibre of the exhibition was inter-national. It didn’t feel like Māori artists were being ghettoised.
“The exhibition should have toured. It’s a scandal and I don’t know why … There would be an appetite for it all over the world.”
Borell says there’s been a shift, domestically and globally, in the way we think about New Zealand art and artists. “The platform for how they’re being shared is a bit different today. It’s exciting.
“But I think it is part of a larger consciousness today around the idea of what diversity means, and part of a bigger conversation globally about indigenous peoples’ knowledge. Other ways of knowing have been given an opportunity in the past five years to really be in the spotlight in a different way than in the past.”
Culture shock
The past, for Melville, is literally and metaphorically a different country. He grew up in Auckland’s eastern suburbs in the 1970s, the child of a Māori mother and Pākehā father at a time when being Māori “was not a thing to be particularly proud of”. One of four Māori children at Bucklands Beach Primary School and about six at Pakuranga College, he was a “fish out of water” in his Howick subdivision.
“There weren’t any Māori around and I’m the only one of four siblings who looks Māori. My parents separated when I was 15. It was quite a stormy home life. So, my siblings and I just scattered. We got away as fast as we could. I went to London. I’ve got two brothers in Australia, my sister lives in the States. I’m the only one who’s come home.
“But I grew up over there, in the heart of London, where I didn’t belong, and when I came home, I didn’t belong here. You end up being a stranger in two countries.”
He spent his formative years, from 20 to 40, working for British Airways as cabin crew and exploring all Europe had to offer in arts and culture.
“All that history and the way people lived – I was fresh off the boat from New Zealand. My eyes were on stalks.”
He also completed a degree in art history. “My tutor, Rita Carter, inspired me so much about how art could make you feel and how political it was. We were talking about [London’s] National Gallery and that the kernel of it was donated by a rich, old white man.
“She said, ‘How does that make you feel?’, and I said, ‘A little bit manipulated’, and she said, ‘Yes, you’ve got it – that is exactly right.’ So, we come back to dealer galleries being tastemakers and gatekeepers. This,” he gestures to the walls, “is my choice – just my choice. It’s not the only choice.
“[In London] I didn’t know where I was from. People didn’t know where I was from. They thought I might be South American, or Italian or Greek, so I could fit in anywhere. New Zealanders are good at that. People can’t slot you in, so you can’t get caught in that class thing. [Class] used to fascinate me, – how it works. But by the end …” he lowers his voice, “get me out of here.
“My grandmother’s German and Danish. So, none of this is one thing or the other; we are all a mix, and it’s where you choose to emphasise your energy. This is my home.”
He returned to a different New Zealand in the early 2000s. “I’d left in the early 80s, and [when I came back] reo was now an official language. Treaty claims were being negotiated. Kids could sing the national anthem in reo. I was so shocked to hear primary school kids singing the national anthem. How did they know how to do that? It was amazing and it was kinda cool to be brown again.”
The gallery he launched in 2007 may be a canvas for a cultural reckoning, but the political is the personal. “I’ve been working out who I am and reconnecting with my people and my whakapapa, so I’ve grown together with the gallery and the artists have shown me how.
“That’s why I know I’m in this to the end. I can contribute here, I think. I have a responsibility to do something helpful here, without being Jesus Christ about it. But if I’d stayed in Europe, I think I would’ve had quite a selfish life. Pleasing myself, flitting around. But here, I do feel like I have a reason … to contribute where I can.”
He reads history. He collects books (“it’s an illness. I can’t stop”). The wall of his office at the gallery is a sprawling bookshelf with taonga from his travels, including a small vessel from 500BC that Josiah Wedgwood used as a model for his first china cups.
He spends his time between Tāmaki Makaurau and Raglan with his partner, renowned potter Tony Sly. “He’s frantic, he works hard. I’m frantic. We see each other on weekends. He always comes to the openings. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. It’s great.”
Melville has no financial backers: the business of selling art has fine margins. Success is “not necessarily about selling. It’s not just about making a million bucks … it’s about supporting the artists you think should be supported.”
Deeper than art
Māori artists have always been there, showing us the way, he says. But now the world is calling. Eight Māori artists are showing at the world’s biggest art show, the 60th Venice Biennale, this year, including Brett Graham (Ngāti Koroki Kahukura, Tainui). Indigenous artists including Nīkau Hinden (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Tūpoto) are also at the forefront at Ten Thousand Suns, the 24th Biennale of Sydney, which runs until June.
The works will be seen by tens of thousands of visitors but the value of such exposure and recognition goes deeper than art, Melville says.
“When you look at the biennales and the way that indigenous people look at the world, suddenly we are appreciating this new way … indigenous knowledge, if you like. So many things go into it, like climate change. Indigenous people know how to look after the whenua. It’s been known for years. Aboriginal people have looked after Australia for 60,000 years. And it’s all being messed up. So, we’re looking at the ways that we used to look after things and indigenous ways are being revalued.”
Melville also represents Pākehā artists, such as Joe Sheehan and Alberto Garcia-Alvarez, the renowned 93-year-old Spanish artist. He’s also the go-to man in Auckland for work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and makes regular visits to remote Australian art communities.
If there’s more Māori art on the walls and plinths, does that mean more Māori are visiting the gallery?
“It depends on the show. This particular show, [Mind That Māori] there have been a lot of Māori coming in: students, friends of friends. And I think we’re changing it for the better. The Māori middle classes – there are more of us.”
Collectors, however, are predominantly Pākehā. “Māori artists’ work hasn’t been available or noticed by the galleries, particularly. I want to present my view of the world, show the things I’m interested in. It has to be personal.”
Melville is careful to make his gallery a welcoming space, the Kaitiaki bronze notwithstanding.
“People, when they come into galleries, they’re nervous because the white cube model can be scary and they worry that someone is going to make them feel stupid because they don’t know what’s on the wall. One of the things I want to do is make people feel comfortable. I think that is also a Māori value, manaaki. The more relaxed people can be, the more likely they will respond to the artwork and understand.”
And that is good for business. “You’re much more likely to buy something if you’ve had a good experience.”
Beacon of hope
Melville sees the current political rhetoric around te reo and te ao Māori as a temporary, albeit disheartening, aberration.
“It’s depressing. Depressing that we seem to be going backwards. But this government will pass. You can’t shut the stable door; the horse has already bolted. Reo is out there. Māori are living strongly and proudly – you can’t shut us down. It’s not going to happen.
“Kiingi Tūheitia said at the [January] hui in Turangawaewae that our best defence, our best action in these situations, is just to be Māori all day, every day. And that’s such a gentle beacon of hope – that’s all we can do.
“There’s some bad shit going on, but there’s some great shit going on, too. These artists represent hope for the future.
“There’s a beautiful piece of writing, by Hori Tait, a Tūhoe kaumātua, who talked about us being ‘only a moment between two eternities – past and future’. We’re just here for a moment. We have to use our moment to do the best we can.”
Tim Melville will be showing selected Māori, Pākehā and Aboriginal artists at the Aotearoa Art Fair, Viaduct Events Centre, Auckland, April 18-21.