Te Waru-Rewiri

This richly illustrated publication examines the last 25 years of the influential Toioho ki Apiti programme at Massey University, its global indigenous pedagogical reach, and its ongoing impacts on national and international contemporary art and cultural sectors. Toioho ki Apiti’s transformative and kaupapa Maori-led programme and its pedagogical model is structured around Maori notions of Mana Whakapapa (inheritance rights), Mana Tiriti (treaty rights), Mana Whenua (land rights) and Mana Tangata (human rights) and is unique in Aotearoa. Its staff and graduates, who include Bob Jahnke, Shane Cotton, Brett Graham, Rachael Rakena, Kura Te Waru-Rewiri, Israel Birch and Ngatai Taepa, are some of the most exciting, powerful and influential figures in contemporary art in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through a series of intimate conversations, Ki Mua, Ki Muri describes the unique environment that has helped form them. Professor Ngahuia Te Awekotuku and Nigel Borell write the forewords.

Kura Te Waru-Rewiri (Ngapuhi, Ngati Kahu, Ngati Rangi, Ngati Kauwhata) studied fine art at Ilam School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury. After graduating she studied at teachers’ college and then taught art in schools, tertiary institutions, universities and whare wananga. She was a founding member, in 1987, of the Te Atinga Committee Toi Maori. In 1993 she and Selwyn Murupaenga were the first Maori appointments to the Elam School of Fine Arts. Kura moved from Elam to teach on the Toioho ki Apiti Bachelor of Maori Visual Arts programme in 1996 and taught there until 2006. Cassandra Barnett is an author and artist of Raukawa, Ngati Huri and Pakeha descent who writes poetry, essays and short fiction about cultural and ecological futures. Her work is published in many journals and anthologies of creative writing and art criticism, and she has appeared at many art and literary events and festivals both in Aotearoa and abroad. Cassandra has a PhD in art writing and philosophy from the University of Auckland and a Master’s in creative writing from Victoria University of Wellington.