Look Inside: Ngā Kaihanga Uku by Baye Riddell

Uku Kaihanga Ngā

Uku Kaihanga Ngā

Māori Clay Artists

Baye Riddell

Photography by Norm Heke

Previous Pages Baye Riddell throwing on the wheel at the Ngā Puna Waihanga hui at Ratana Pā, Whanganui, in 1989. Left Manu te Oriori o te Kapuatanga (Creation Singer), 1998, by Colleen Waata Urlich.

foLLowing Page Ipu Kauae, 2003, by Manos Nathan.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Manos Nathan, Colleen Waata Urlich and Hiraina Marsden

Ngā maharatanga tino mahana ki a koutou Warm memories of you

Rārangi ūpoko Contents

Karakia

Te Huakaiuku

He huauri au

Nā Te Huakaiuku

Nā Tūā i te waihanga

Nāna i ahuahu

Te onekura

Te onetapu

Ka whakatinana

Ka whakaūpoko

Ka whakatauira mai e.

Mai e Pua!

Hika rā te ahi

Nā Ue, nā Mahu

Nā Te Umuroa i mamao.

He ahi mā

Ka mumura

He ahi mā

Ka wewera

Tukua te pūmahana

Kia mātao e!

E manu

Whakaarahia i te kōmau!

E kura, Maranga ake i te pungarehu!

Tahia te papa

Kia puehu e!

I am a descendant of Te Huakaiuku, Of Tūā i te waihanga, Of those who fashioned In crimson clay And sacred earth, Those who gave form To humankind As we know it.

Greetings oh Pua!

The one who lit the fires Of Ue and Mahu

Those distant firepits Which remain blazing still, Where the master’s art Illuminates and glows

Heating and cooling to release The magic of the fire.

Oh my prized And treasured creation With these sacred rituals

Rise up from the embers

Rise up from the ashes

Clear the smouldering hearth

To reveal your earthly shadow.

— Professor Sir Derek Lardelli, 2021

Manos Nathan

Te Roroa, Ngāti Whātua, Ngāpuhi, Crete 1948–2015

Manos Nathan was born in Rawene in 1948, the second son of Edward (Ned) and Katina Nathan. His parents had met during the Second World War: Ned was a soldier in the 28th Māori Battalion, and Katina was a school teacher on the Greek island of Crete. In 1941 Ned was wounded during the Battle of Crete and missed the evacuation of the Allied troops from the island. He was taken to Sklavopoula, a small village high in the mountains, where his wounds were treated by Katina’s uncle, the local doctor.

Ned was then helped by Katina’s family and others as he hid out in the mountains for eighteen months until he was captured by the occupying German forces and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. At the end of the war, Ned returned to Crete. He and Katina married there before travelling to New Zealand to begin their lives together.17

Manos spent his early years on a small farm in the Wekaweka Valley, an isolated South Hokianga settlement north of the Waipoua Forest in Northland, with his parents and his two brothers, Alex and Evan. In 1955 the family moved to Wellington, where Ned and Katina opened a restaurant, Café Crete, in Trentham. The plan was to save enough money for the family to travel to Crete – a promise that Ned had made to Katina’s family. They did this in 1957, the journey taking them by ship to England and across Europe by train, before finally arriving on Crete. The family was away from New Zealand for seven months. Manos was eight at the time.

When they returned to New Zealand, they settled back in Trentham. The family was very involved in both the Greek and Māori communities in Wellington. On Sundays they often attended services at both the Greek Orthodox and the Māori Anglican church, and the family home was open to many young people from both cultures – recent migrants from Crete, and young Māori attracted to the city: it was a place of refuge while they found their feet in their new environment.

In 1965 the family moved to Tītahi Bay, where Manos attended Mana College. He formed two important relationships there – with his art teacher Susan Renner (later Flight), who recognised and nurtured his artistic talent, and with fellow artist and lifelong friend Eruera Te Whiti Nia. Manos and Eruera spent a great deal of time in the art room, where Susan introduced them to many art disciplines, including woodcarving, which the pair both subsequently pursued. Susan later supported Manos in his successful application for registration as a conscientious objector to the three months of compulsory military training legislated for under the National Military Service Act 1961.18

Manos studied at the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design, graduating in 1970 with a diploma in textile design, although his work was principally as a painter. After graduating he worked as a postie in Wellington, a job that gave him time to develop his painting. At this Left Manos Nathan in 2007.

stage he did not imagine that his art or, for that matter, his design training might become a source of income.

In 1972 Manos married Alison Fagan, and in 1974 they left for Europe, where they worked in England and travelled throughout the Continent in the summers: they visited many art galleries and cathedrals, and had a lengthy stay on Crete. They came back to New Zealand in 1976 via the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia.

In 1982 Ned asked Manos to help carve the wharenui Tūohu for Matatina marae at Waipoua. Manos, Alison and their young daughter Katy moved north, initially to Te Kōpuru, where Manos’s older brother, Alex, and his family were living. The two families stayed in one of the buildings of the former Northern Wairoa Hospital, which was then the home of the Reverend Maori Marsden. Manos’s parents had retired and were living nearby in Dargaville.

About this time a Kōkiri Centre (community facility), Maungarongo, was established at the former hospital site to provide work skills programmes to young unemployed people. It was here that the carvings for Matatina marae were started. Manos consulted with elders from the whānau and the wider Waipoua community to gather whakapapa, history and traditions to inform the carving. Maori Marsden, ‘a man of both worlds with degrees in anthropology and divinity’, was Manos’s mentor.19 He had a huge influence on how Manos came to perceive things Māori, both in relation to the carving of Tūohu and more broadly. Ben Te Wake, an experienced carver and friend of Maori Marsden, was also influential in the early stages of the project.20

right Alex Nathan, Manos Nathan (centre) and Ned Nathan at Matatina marae, Waipoua, Northland, around 1980.

The five founders

Ngā Tokorima

Baye Riddell, Manos Nathan, Colleen Waata Urlich, Wi Taepa and Paerau Corneal, the five artists known collectively as Ngā Tokorima, are generally referred to as the founding members of Ngā Kaihanga Uku. This group came together over a period of seven years, and others – in particular Hiraina Marsden and Papaarangi Reid – were involved in the early stages and contributed to the kōrero that shaped Ngā Kaihanga Uku. The timeline below records the key milestones of the group.

1985 Baye Riddell, a fulltime potter since 1974, met Manos Nathan at a Ngā Puna Waihanga hui in Wellington. Manos had begun working with clay along with Papaarangi Reid and Hiraina Marsden in Northland, under the technical guidance of Pākehā potter Robyn Stewart.

1987 Hiraina Marsden and Papaarangi Reid helped organise the first Ngā Kaihanga Uku wānanga at Baye Riddell’s pottery in Tokomaru Bay. Manos Nathan could not attend because his father, Ned, was very ill. George Kojis came, bringing a group of students from Wanganui Polytechnic. That year Baye Riddell also met Colleen Waata Urlich at a Ngā Puna Waihanga hui at Waahi marae in Huntly.

1988 Manos Nathan and his whānau hosted the second and third hui, Te Ahi Kā Roa, at Matatina marae, at Waipoua near Dargaville, to build and fire a wood-fired kiln. Papaarangi Reid and Hiraina Marsden were also instrumental in the organisation of this hui.

1991 At George Kojis’s suggestion, Wi Taepa attended his first Ngā Kaihanga Uku hui, ‘Te Pokepoke Uku: The Mixing of Clays’, at Tokomaru Bay, at which a delegation of Native American potters was hosted.

1992 Paerau Corneal met Colleen Waata Urlich at the South Pacific Arts Festival in Rarotonga, and she later met Wi Taepa and Manos Nathan in 1995 at the Apumoana Gathering in Rotorua.

Hiraina Marsden passed away in 2004, and Papaarangi Reid’s interest in clay took a back seat given the increasing responsibilities of her medical career. And so, because clay was for the most part their fulltime livelihood, Baye, Manos, Colleen, Wi and Paerau became Ngā Tokorima, the five principal Māori clay artists, and the core of Ngā Kaihanga Uku. Others were engaging with clay, but their involvement was either sporadic or it was not their primary medium. This would change later on as a new generation became committed to clay as their medium of choice, mainly through tertiary programmes and wānanga led by Ngā Tokorima.

In 2005 Ngā Kaihanga Uku was invited to exhibit at Te Papa. The show was titled Ngā Toko Rima, a reference to the five fiery fingers of Mahuika. This name stuck and became the nickname for the group, which was also sometimes called ‘The Tight Five’ – a rugby term.

Previous Pages Detail of Kaitiaki, 2017, by Baye Riddell. Left Ngā Tokorima in 2003. From left, Manos Nathan, Colleen Waata Urlich, Paerau Corneal, Baye Riddell and Wi Taepa.

Paerau Corneal and Wi Taepa outside Wi’s studio in Tītahi Bay in 2023.

Paerau Corneal

Ngāti Uenuku ki Manganui a te Ao, Ngāti Tūwharetoa

b. 1961

Lives in Whakatāne

I don’t live in my iwi area. I was brought up outside of there and live away from Rotorua, where I was born. Both my grandmothers lived with us at different times. Raetihi is in many ways where my heart is, in my experiences as a child with whānau, tangi, and living with my kuia for a time in my wandering youth.

A large part of how I define myself is through the familiar landscapes from my childhood and where I live, from Raetihi to the Manganui o te Ao river, across the Central Plateau to Tokaanu and Lake Taupō and through to Rotorua. My relationship to the whenua at any given time is important to me.

I think it’s an important kōrero for Māori to reinforce, that we all come from quite diverse backgrounds and have diverse experiences of being Māori and of whānau, and our journeys are also diverse. Parenting later in life to young children and dealing with the dysfunctional agency that is Oranga Tamariki has interrupted my art practice. The past five years were particularly challenging, negotiating through the barriers that are systemic to the agency.

While some Māori working in clay are not focused on articulating a Māori kaupapa or connection through their work, the kaupapa of Ngā Kaihanga Uku prioritises mātauranga Māori and associated ways of doing and getting things done. The Ngā Kaihanga Uku collective started from a whakapapa Māori base and sensibility. It doesn’t mean we are exclusive, but it does maintain and nurture identity. As committee members of Te Ātinga, the organisation that focuses on supporting Māori artists to explore, experiment, develop and share their creative interests, Manos Nathan and Colleen Waata Urlich were instrumental in promoting Ngā Kaihanga Uku at every opportunity, including at indigenous and international events.

Colleen’s Master’s research into Lapita pottery connects our uku practice to Pacific clay and our whakapapa through the Pacific. This resonated with me when I attended the 2012 Festival of Pacific Arts in the Solomon Islands, where the Honiara museum has an extensive collection of Lapita pottery. There was huge interest from the locals in our making and firing techniques, and whether our process could be adapted to economically support their whānau. We gifted clay works made during the festival and, in a generous inclusion, these were displayed alongside the Lapita collection in the museum’s new purposebuilt space to house their collection of Lapita pottery. Again, at the Pacific Arts Festival in Guam 2016 there was an abundance of Lapita shards – evidence of the trade routes and ocean voyaging throughout the Pacific.

With Ngā Kaihanga Uku there’s never been a limitation on my expression as mana wahine, or as wahine takatāpui. All have been incredibly supportive of all the women in the group, in terms of our integrity and our direction with uku. Manos encouraged women to carve uku; Baye has the magic of fire, with kilns and low-firing techniques; Wi is the trickster; and Colleen was the matriarch who kept us all in check.

Left Paerau Corneal at Tītahi Bay in 2023.

Clay is a very physical and temperamental material at times. It’s a lengthy process before you get to that point where it all starts to come together. It’s not as immediate as, say, painting. There is an excitement, when it comes together. When your ideas are working and the forms are working and the materials are working is, you know, pretty heady.

When we get together as Ngā Kaihanga Uku we share a really close time, reinforcing why we’re doing uku, and those spiritual, practical connections all come into play in a very natural, unlaboured way. I don’t want to feed into a notion, a romantic view, of Ngā Kaihanga Uku and clay artists. I think our work clearly says we’re Māori. Even if you don’t recognise the design elements, it says culture in an identifiable way. The material and the process are very grounded, practical and whenua-based.

In 1990 I completed the Diploma in Craft Design, Māori at Waiariki Polytechnic in Rotorua. I settled on weaving and clay as major media for my diploma years. The mediabased programme offered wood, bone, weaving, paint, printmaking and design. I continue to use these skills on clay in some form. Māori artists from Ngā Puna Waihanga were also tutoring on the craft design programmes, alongside master weavers such as Christina (Tina) Hurihia Wirihana. Tina instilled in me a love of weaving. All the kete I made were undyed, relying on the natural colour in the harakeke and blemishes in the muka as decorative elements in pattern making.

above Harakeke Pot, 1998, flax woven around clay vessel. right In the Beginning Were the Waka, 1991. Collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 1996-0033-10/1-33, commissioned 1991, in partnership with Expo NZ 1992 Ltd and the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand.

The new generation Te reanga hou

Hāpaitia te ara tika pūmau ai te rangatiratanga

mō ngā uri whakatipu

Foster the pathway of knowledge to strength, independence and growth for future generations

Anew generation of ‘Muddies’ has emerged over the years, largely through the mentorship, encouragement and commitment of Ngā Tokorima. Most have come through the tertiary Māori arts programmes of Northland Polytech, Toihoukura in Gisborne and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. Ngā Kaihanga Uku wānanga held at these institutions and elsewhere helped them see uku as a possible career path, or as a primary medium in their future artistic direction.

The input of the senior artists of Ngā Kaihanga Uku may have had some stylistic influence on the work of this new generation, but perhaps the main influence was in seeing how clay was being used to interpret and express a Māori world view. They also had the advantage and benefit of taking arts courses that were designed by Māori for Māori, and working in culturally supportive and stimulating environments.

The challenge for each of these emerging uku artists was to find their own identity and expression in clay and to be able to fly on their own when they left the kōhanga (nest) of the institution. This has required an individual commitment, perseverance and resilience to establish themselves, and the Ngā Kaihanga Uku whānau network has helped this new generation to find their place in the wider arts world.

Various members have taken leading roles and responsibilities in Ngā Kaihanga Uku, particularly since the deaths of Manos Nathan and Colleen Waata Urlich. All have their individual strengths and bring their special contribution and personality to the collective rourou (food basket).

It has been difficult to decide who to include in this section. Some initially made very promising work and then went in other directions; some made occasional forays into uku, but it was not their main medium; and some attended Ngā Kaihanga Uku wānanga but were not able, for whatever reason, to make that commitment to the uku that defined an uku artist. On the other hand there are highly skilled and committed practising Māori clay artists who have not yet made a connection with Ngā Kaihanga Uku, or who are in the process of developing a relationship with us.

So the following, for the most part, represents those who have consistently been there in our journey and ‘done the mahi’ and got the ringaraupā, the calloused hands, at wānanga, exhibitions, group trips and projects, and whose work is of a consistently high standard. They have all found their voice in clay and have embraced uku as their life.

Previous Pages Detail of Ipu Matawhero, 2016, by Amorangi Hikuroa.

To young artists, When the creative spirit isn’t there relax, That’s the time to hone technical skills, do tests, experiment with raw materials, see what they can’t do. Art doesn’t have to be weird to be wonderful. Study what your ancestors did, even replicate. When your creative spirit is charging, Let it run but with hands holding carefully at the reins, push beyond your own comfort zones and avoid becoming too established, too settled, too soon. Be curious! ask questions! always be a student of life. Established artists, We can develop our own bag of problems. We might settle too easily for our own tricks. We become a successful skill machine obsessed fussy perfectionists striving to create the perfectly clean flaw hiding that which reveals the human touch. Work becomes sterile, lifeless, motionless, dead. While we’re busy impressing collectors and winning art judges’ approval we forget we’re supposed to be the ones leading the way! We’ll sacrifice our own spirit if we stoop to crank out a popular and/or saleable product to satisfy those who still need to be educated. Both poverty and celebrity status can kill. Poverty is the lion in the grass But celebrity status is the unseen virus.

— Richard Zane Smith, 2021

Amorangi Hikuroa

Carla Ruka

Todd Douglas

Dorothy Waetford

Ida Edwards

Tracy Keith

Yvonne Tana

Karuna Douglas

Dave Cameron

A Ngā Kaihanga Uku wānanga at Tokomaru Bay in 2018. above Carla Ruka.

Centre Amorangi Hikuroa, Rhonda Halliday, James Webster, Elijah Revell and Carla Ruka. beLow Amorangi Hikuroa.

Amorangi Hikuroa

Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Maniapoto

b. 1979

Lives in Whangārei

In 1998 Amorangi Hikuroa enrolled in the Certificate in Visual Arts programme at Northland Polytechnic, where Manos Nathan was a sculpture tutor. Under Manos’s guidance Amorangi was introduced to clay while also pursuing painting, whakairo and design. Working with Manos at his marae, Matatina, on a commission for the Whangārei Art Museum was his first time firing a large wood-fired kiln. Working with clay in this environment ignited his pyromania and love of uku: ‘I forgot everything else and just wanted clay,’ he says.

Following this epiphany, the resources at the polytechnic enabled Amorangi to develop basic skills, and he learnt to throw, glaze, raku fire and pit fire and studied other forms of archaic firing techniques. His painterly sensibilities and whakairo studies are evident in the smoke-mottled surfaces of his ceramic vessels, elegantly inscribed with whakairo. They are sculptural forms inspired by rich teachings in the heritage of allegory and metaphor.

Amorangi attended his first uku gathering in 2002 with Manos at Toihoukura, where he met like-minded students and the other pioneers of the uku movement. In 2004, Manos invited Amorangi to attend the Festival of Pacific Arts in Palau under the guidance of Wi Taepa. The realisation that he would be representing the Māori uku movement to other Pasifika nations was not lost on Amorangi; he regarded it as ‘a heavy but important part of my journey’. It was his first time overseas, and the experience of being with Pasifika people from twenty-seven nations made a huge impression on him and galvanised him into getting more serious about his art. He began to work in earnest and, with the help of Manos, began to draw on mātauranga to enrich a foundation of expression and celebrate his Māori identity through mahi uku.

Amorangi currently has a studio space at the Quarry Arts Centre in Whangārei, the pottery centre founded by renowned New Zealand potter Yvonne Rust, where he is part of a lively artist community. He has a keen appreciation for the global history of clay working and feels a strong sense of connection with countless generations of potters and

artists. While he carefully controls his form work, he allows the clay and fire to work together to produce timeless effects and a sense of antiquity. Amorangi also has an acute sense of his own place within that lineage. His sculptural forms and surface treatments draw from his Ngāpuhi whakapapa and their rich legacy of whakairo design.

More recently, Amorangi has explored high-temperature wood-firing techniques and glazes with the help of Greg Barron and his wife Jin Ling, of Glenbervie Pottery, who are a major inspiration and source of technical knowledge for him.

‘We have avenues where clay is now utilised within our culture, made relevant by our mentors and founders of Ngā Kaihanga Uku,’ he says. ‘So I pay homage to them for giving Māori a pathway back to our ancestral links within the Pacific and reconnecting Māori back to the most ancient of human art forms. I am a practitioner of cultural expression, making objects that are part of my story. What I create will be left as evidence that I was. I believe the work I do and the journey I’m on is now part of the story of clay. I pay homage to my ancestors, the greatest of navigators, and the first clay workers of the Pacific. They left a map, a guide for us to follow, so we will always know where we’re from, where we are and where we’re going. We are all clay, the body of the mother.’

Taumata ā-mahi Milestone events

2004 9th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture, Palau

2012 11th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture, Solomon Islands

2014 Toi Māori Market, Te Rauparaha Arena, Porirua

2016 12th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture, Guam

2017 Toru Tekau: Ngā Kaihanga Uku – Māori Clay Artists exhibition, Tairāwhiti Museum, Gisborne

2020 NUku, Ngā Kaihanga Uku exhibition, Te Uru Gallery, Titirangi, Auckland

work by amorangi hikuroa, CLoCkwise from toP Left

Ipu Matawhero, 2016, stoneware, pit-fired, 560 x 345 mm. Private collection; Ipu, 2018, stoneware, shino and ash glazes, wood-fired, 190 x 195 mm.

Private collection; Tupuna, 2016, stoneware, pit-fired, 400 x 420 mm.

Private collection; Ipu Waiora, 2018, stoneware, shino and ash glazes, wood-fired 300 x 380 mm. Private collection.

Carla Ruka

Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whatua

b. 1981

Lives in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

‘I am a sculptress.’

Art was not Carla Ruka’s most successful subject at high school in Auckland. Being required to copy the work of famous European artists, and as one of only a handful of Māori students at Pakuranga College, she felt as though she didn’t ‘fit in’. When she was fifteen, she signed herself out of school and enrolled in Pounamu Performing Arts, a kapa haka-based initiative founded by Ngapo and Pimia Wehi. On a trip to Gisborne, the group visited the Toihoukura art school, an experience she found so exciting that she moved to Gisborne and enrolled at Toihoukura soon after.

She was not drawn to uku until a wānanga in 2002, where she watched Ngā Kaihanga Uku demonstrating an open-firing technique that Baye Riddell had learned at the world ceramics expo in Korea. Students were allowed to participate, and the elemental energy of the fire was momentous, leaving her with a sense of awe and new-found inspiration. This, along with encouragement from Manos Nathan and Wi Taepa, further drew her to clay and nurtured her artistic direction.

The ‘Māori Angels’ series was one of the first conceptual sculpture series to emerge: it was a means of releasing and healing the grief she had felt in her youth when she had lost friends to suicide. She credits Toihoukura tutor Sandy Adsett with helping her to expand her conceptual process from two-dimensional limitations to a three-dimensional vision so she could imbue her figures with a sense of movement. The swirling forms of the ‘Māori Angels’ suggested the space in which wings might move – rather than a literal representation of feathered angelic appendages. Incorporating korowai into the forms alongside traditional design elements such as kōwhaiwhai, moko kauae (female chin tattoo) and tāniko and accessorising them with muka and feathers firmly grounds them as Māori ceramic sculpture.

This declaration was more overtly developed in Carla’s ‘Hineukurangi’ works, which were an exploration of tikanga, taha Māori, atua wāhine, wāhine toa, the female essence

– a discovery of self. Some of the pieces were deliberately sectioned – fragmented – then reassembled, suggesting a self-inflicted and even painful examination of ourselves and the effort of trying to fit the pieces together, and the struggles and different components that make up who we are. They didn’t always fit perfectly because we are still a work in progress and she believes we must leave room for evolution. The different colours of the fragments can also be interpreted as whakapapa – the different ethnic roots from whom we are descended – trying to find harmony in our view of ourselves.

In Unlock Your Potential metal objects such as screws and keys were incorporated to signify the act of unlocking ourselves and releasing our potential. Carla recalls these works being greeted with dismay by people from whom she usually sought feedback. They preferred her ‘prettier’ pieces and called these works ‘ugly’. Initially she was discouraged, but she came to see that in order to progress she had to take risks and ignore the conservative ideas that would stop her taking the next exciting and empowering step. Her mantra is ‘Know who you are . . and if you don’t know who you are then find out!’

Her ‘Delia’ series – portraits of fellow artist Delia Woodham – was an exploration of 3D portraiture for which she made a mould of the original face and tried out different features such as hair types, ears, noses, eyes, facial elements and alter egos. It was also an attempt to discover new skills and approach clay from a European perspective.

Although Carla has practised different techniques in claymaking such as throwing on a wheel and slab-building, her preferred making method is coiling, which makes, she says, a direct connection for her with Hineukurangi: it involves control and movement, and she is fully engaged and at one with the clay. Over her years of creating, Carla has developed her own coiling technique, which she teaches throughout New Zealand. When it comes to design, she uses a palette of glazes, terra sigillata, slips and engobes to add decorative features, often made up of what she calls ‘significant earth’ materials sourced from ancestral sites. In a mural installation in the Cordis Hotel in Auckland, for example, she incorporated slip handprints – with slip made of clay from land

of her Ngāti Whātua tīpuna. She recalls that this had an unexpectedly profound emotional effect on her.

Ngā Kaihanga Uku is ‘family’ to Carla – ‘family who encourage one another and who you can rely on to be there’, she says. She recalls Auntie Colleen’s support for her work, and their shared experiences as single mothers. From Manos Nathan she learned aspects of tikanga and the whakapapa of fire and clay and in her weekly conversations with Wi Taepa she discussed the complexities of any and everything to do with clay. ‘I love working alongside Baye’, she says. Whether or not they are making, firing, exhibiting or just chatting, she states that it is ‘so harmonious’.

She also values the international connections she has made through Ngā Kaihanga Uku, and being able to draw inspiration from people such as Richard Rowland, whose focus is on building community through clay. She sees this as the direction she wants to move in, ‘creating connections, filling the gaps and building bridges through uku’. Yet even while having a vision of community connection through clay, she does not neglect her own wellbeing and relationship with uku: ‘Clay is my therapy,’ she says.

Taumata ā-mahi Milestone events

1998 Pounamu Performing Arts with Ngapo and Pimia Wehi. Trip to visit Toihoukura, Māori Visual Arts School, Gisborne; subsequently enrolled

2002 Ngā Kaihanga Uku wānanga, Gisborne

2009 Birth of daughter, Inca Kotuku Ruka

2015 Mauri: The essence of materials exhibition and workshops with Richard Rowland, Portland, Oregon, United States

2020 Opens own creative business: Carla Ruka Limited – carlaruka.com

2021 Touring potter for the Ceramics Association of New Zealand, teaching Coil Aotearoa workshops, with added community outreach programmes

work by CarLa ruka,

Previous Page Ko Au, ‘Māori Angels’ series, 2015, earthenware, oxides, paint, epoxy, sealant, electric firing, 1450 x 400 mm. Private collection; right Unlock

Your Potential, ‘Hineukurangi’ series, 2017, earthenware, stains and oxides, sigillata, keys, nails, bolts, screws, staples, pit-fired saggar, 610 x 330 mm. Private collection; far right Delos, ‘Delia’ series, 2014, reclaimed midfire, glaze, oxides, electric firing, 400 x 200 x 400 mm. Private collection.

Rārangi wā Timeline

1987

First hui, Tokomaru Bay, East Coast

In 1987 we got together for our first hui at Tokomaru Bay. It amuses me now when I look at the pānui (notices) of those times, rendered in Letraset and handwritten text, pasted up and photocopied.

Previous Pages Detail of Rangiriri te Hautupua III, 2004, by Manos Nathan.

oPPosite Invitation to the inaugural Ngā Kaihanga Uku hui at Tokomaru Bay in 1987.

Left Manuhiri are farewelled on Pākirikiri marae, Tokomaru Bay, at the conclusion of the 1987 hui. beLow Group photo at the Ngā Kaihanga Uku Te Pokepoke Uku (Blending of Clays) hui at Matatina marae in 1991, (see following page). International guests included Joseph Calabaza (front row, left) and Blue Corn (middle row, fourth from left) and Al Qoyawayma (back row, second from left).

1988

Second hui, Matatina marae, Waipoua

Before the second Ngā Kaihanga Uku wānanga, Manos had asked me if I had any suggestions for a name for his pottery. I had been considering the concept of ahikāroa, and using that as a name for my own pottery in Tokomaru Bay. However, my pottery was situated on land leased from the local council, not my own papakāinga, whereas Manos’s pottery was on his marae. To my mind, the name was more suitable for his pottery, so I suggested it to him and he adopted it. We also used it as the name for the hui.

1989

Visit to the United States

Manos Nathan and I travelled to the United States on a Fulbright grant to establish connections with Native American potters.

1991

Te Pokepoke Uku (The Blending of Clays), Tokomaru Bay and Matatina marae

In 1991 Native American potters Blue Corn, Joseph Calabaza, Jody and Susan Folwell and Al Qoyawayma came to New Zealand. Blue Corn and Joseph were from the San Ildefonso Pueblo, Jody and Susan from Santa Clara, and Al from Hopi. We held workshops and also took our visitors on a tour to Wellington and Rotorua and to Barry Brickell’s Driving Creek Pottery at Coromandel. The demonstrations of burnishing and dung-firing techniques were valuable, but it was their respect for the clay that really resonated with us as Māori clay artists.

oPPosite, Left Invitation to the second Ngā Kaihanga Uku hui at Matatina marae, Waipoua, Northland, in 1988.

oPPosite, right Programme for the third Ngā Kaihanga Uku hui at Matatina marae, Waipoua, Northland, in 1991.

CLoCkwise from toP right Cabinet minister Peter Tapsell visits the Tokomaru Bay studio during the 1987 hui.

Barry Brickell (centre) at the 1988 hui at Matatina marae.

Robyn

Stewart (left), Gemeaux Riddell (right) and George Kojis at Hinetamatea marae, Anaura Bay, during the 1987 hui.

Wi Taepa at the 1991 ‘Te Pokepoke Uku’ hui at Tokomaru Bay.