Maori to Christianity they considered it more expedient to teach reading and writing in Te Reo (Maori) rather than the more lengthy process of teaching both a new language and literacy at the same time. In 1820 Hika and the Ngapuhi chief Waikato of Rangihoua accompanied the Reverend Thomas Kendall to England where they worked for five months with the Cambridge Professor, Samuel Lee, in compiling the first Maori grammar and vocabulary book. This text mapped the orthographic foundations of written Maori. The inclusion of text has been one of the most significant elements in Cotton’s paintings. Following the complex interchange of nineteenthcentury cultural trade, in works such as A.B.C., text as both an historical and contemporary referent has consistently formed a key part of Cotton’s visual syntax – in the gothicstyle lettering of gang patches in Kenehi III (1998), for example, and the more recent graffiti style text in
Now There (2010) and Sons of God(s) (2010). In reference to the air-brushed graffiti of these latest works, John Hurrell has described the text as “a reworking of or a dialogue with McCahon by presenting some sort of crisis… All assumptions seemingly are being currently reassessed.” Perhaps for Cotton, part of the melancholy evoked in sepia-toned works like A.B.C., and the more recent discursive graffiti works, is the decline of Maori oral culture. As each successive generation reinterprets history through written texts, the inherent instability of that text can be weighed against an oral tradition which is arguably richer and perhaps closer to the truth.
Kriselle Baker