John Hurrell – 12 November, 2022

Seventeen delicate kites, constructed by Nikau Hindin from aute fabric made from beaten, soaked, fermented and rebeaten paper mulberry bark, are displayed in Season, presenting a traditional but rarely seen technique she is now well known for. They are hung on fishing lines from protruding dowel rods attached to the walls at different heights. Surprisingly they are not bird-shaped (as is traditional for Māori) but initially, through their diamond shape, more connected it would seem at first glance, to non-objective painting that incorporates European artists like Mondrian.

These smallish diamond or rectangle-shaped objects are decorated with abstract motifs consisting of softly coloured triangles from tukutuku or tāniko motifs, rectangles and bars, using paint from earth pigments found at certain locations around Aotearoa. As they are suspended, they can be viewed from both sides. They swivel in the air.

Most of them are too small to be separated from the dowelling and flown on a long line. They are made to be kept and thought about indoors—and looked after and valued as artworks—where the rod can be swung through the air in a room, and the flying diamond imagined hovering high outside.

These are in fact paintings, but not in the usual sense. Immaculately rendered hard-edged geometrical motifs are positioned on the carefully made vegetative fabric that closeup is unlike any stretched canvas, metal sheet or hardboard panel that NZ artists like Killeen, Walters or Morris might use as support. (The photographs on the right are deceptive.) It has a fine organic fibrous surface that is not smooth or perfectly flat and planar, but undulating.

It also has a diagonal grain. Across it, using raking light, you can see indentations from the pummelling clublike beater, a subtly raised texture, an embossed watermark effect. Usually the aute is folded over on two opposite edges for strengthening, with small parts of the motifs peeking through around the edges on the other side. The contours are not severely straight but have an organic, wobbly feel. As kites they have at their bases, tails made of muka and tikumu to give them aeronautic stability.

The aute bark came from Te Tai Tokerau and O‘ahu, the light brackets (created by Emile Drescher) are made of kwila and kareao, while the colours are diverse in origin, the kerewhenua (yellow) and the hōrua (red) coming from Te Tai Tokerau, the pukepoto (blue) from Te Waipounamu. The parauri (brown) was made by mixing hōrua (red) with ngārahu (black), the kākaramea (orange) by blending kerewhenua and hōrua.

In her online artist’s notes for the show, Hindin points out that kites were mainly flown as an act of exuberance, joyful play, and family fun—but also as an ominous warning. (Perhaps of approaching war parties?) She mentions the climate crisis as an appropriate contemporary topic of urgent concern, which of course in today’s context seems to imply the imminent end of human life on our planet, the end of play, and the end of art.

John Hurrell

BTW Seb Charles’ short film, Te Uru Aute, about Hindin and her teina, Rongomai Grbic-Hoskins—and her apprenticeship in aute production—will be screened (with a book launch) at the Academy Theatre on Sat. 26 November at 6 pm, $12 admission.

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