Tihi | Ōhakune, Manawatū – Whanganui

“I was born in Whanganui, and I was brought up on the marae with my mum in a wananga. I think it was the wanangas from my mum. I couldn’t speak English properly till I was six.

Then my parents split up. With my mum now. It’s pretty good. Academically, my behaviour was pretty angry, actually. Heaps of fighting at school when I was younger. Now that I’m talking about this, it’s almost like it’s labelled itself bravery, like oh, no I don’t know. I really don’t. 

I didn’t get to see my dad often. But I went and saw my dad and then I stayed there because I loved it, the whole marae thing and all my cousins and shit. Then I was kicked out of my dad’s, and then down to Wellington to study art, and work, and then back here. It’s so hard. It’s been super-hard recently. I started questioning myself. It’s probably a little bit lonely, actually for me, but not always a bad way. Sometimes it is in a bad way. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes the loneliness will create just a perfect space to create artwork, like a vacuum. I always say I’m unemployed, but I’m an artist, just on the slow burn. 

I do Māori art, some moko. Trying to work on those murals. I’ve got a couple of paintings. I’m obviously not super-big on talking about myself.

It’s always Māori stuff, like Māori stories, or concepts. Most the time it’s something that I just recently learned, I suppose it would be my only way of documenting. For an exam that I was doing, for an exhibition, I had to produce three artworks about stories from my iwi, and man, I had heard nothing of them. My dad told me to ring my uncle up, and he told me things, and it was so good. Made so much sense. So, normally it would be about this. The mountain, trees, birds. I love that shit. All the Māori things make so much sense to me. More and more sense. I suppose that’s due to being brought up on the marae and only speaking Māori till I was like five or six. But tama tū, tama ora, tama noho, tama mate, which is like ‘the person who does nothing dies’, and if, if you’re not doing nothing, then you’ll be good to go. That’s always a good one for me, to kick me into gear.

Whāia te iti kahurangi, ki te tuohu koe, me he maunga teitei which means to go after the sacred treasure, or go out and chase your dreams, and if you have to bail let it be to the great mountain.”