Always song in the water

Always song in the water: an ode to Moana Oceania
by Gregory O’Brien

Always song in the water is an imaginative exploration of Aotearoa’s oceanic environment. This is the new, expanded edition of the now out-of-print 2019 book of the same title. The new exhibition and its accompanying book celebrates—in images, words and sound—our connectedness with the wider Pacific region, its peoples, flora, fauna and the expansive waters which both inspire and define us.

It is 11 years since the New Zealand Maritime Museum held the ground-breaking exhibition ‘Kermadec—Nine Artists in the South Pacific’, curated and co-ordinated by Gregory O’Brien, with Bronwen Golder of the Pew Environment Group. The new exhibition and this book Always song in the water returns to the themes, ongoing concerns and unresolved issues of the earlier project. In essence, the 2011 Kermadec voyage never ended. O’Brien and the other artists who voyaged to Rangitāhua Raoul Island on HMNZS Otago never really disembarked from the ship that took them north. They think of themselves as still out there, on the ocean, absorbing its energy, listening to its oceanic songs and confronting the environmental issues which have only increased in urgency over the ensuing decade.

Always song in the water— explores such topics as whale surveying, cultural connections across the Pacific, the need for ocean sanctuaries (such as the proposed Kermadec one) and the multi-layered history of Polynesian and European societies in Oceania. As well as including works and words by O’Brien and the other ‘Kermadec’ artists, this expanded edition features many new and commissioned works by leading artists including Chris Charteris, Shona Rapira Davies, Yuki Kihara, John Walsh and others. The book and the new exhibition celebrates Moana Oceania as a site of immense poetic and artistic potential. At the same time, it acknowledges that the region is facing issues of over-fishing, pollution and global warming. It returns to the originating theme of the need for ocean sanctuaries. ‘Always song in the water’ speaks of the need for better understanding, and a closer relationship with the ocean and everything it contains. It reminds us that the imagination and the arts have a crucial role to play in our evolving relationship with Moana Oceania.

Always song in the water – Art inspired by Moana Oceania, an exhibition at the New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui A Tangaroa, curated by Gregory O’Brien and Jaqui Knowles, is on from 24 August – 29 February 2024

Card-cover with flaps, section-sewn PUR glued | 296 pages  240mm x 175mm Portrait, numerous colour illustrations
ISBN 978-0-473-68102-9
Published by New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa

RRP $40

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For all wholesale orders and requests info@rimbooks.com

Motutapu: Benjamin Work & Brendan Kitto

Motutapu
Benjamin Work & Brendan Kitto
Foreword by Zoe Black, essays by Pita Turei, Paul Johansson, Stan Wolfgramm and the artists
Designed by Shaun Naufahu and Giordano Zatta

Presented as an exhibition at Te Uru and as this publication, MOTUTAPU is the conclusion of a four-year journey by artist Benjamin Work and photographer Brendan Kitto. This project looks at the shared history of Motutapu (sacred island) throughout Moana Oceania – including Tongatapu, Rarotonga and at the entrance to the Waitematā Harbour here in Tāmaki Makaurau. Motutapu is a place of sanctuary. Positioned at the entrance of great harbours, straddling the open ocean and the mainland, it serves as a gateway for navigators arriving and departing on voyages. The lifting of tapu and making things noa took place on Motutapu, allowing navigators to continue with their journey back to their closest kāinga, even if it was generations later.

Work and Kitto’s inquiry into Motutapu was initially centred around the shared name. What soon became apparent was a deeper connection to their own hohoko/ʻakapapa (genealogy) as they travelled to three of the Motutapu locations and connected with key knowledge holders. Motutapu has become a metaphor for Work and Kitto as a starting point for these personal journeys. Through Work’s paintings and Kitto’s photographs of their journeys, combined with the introductions to the three Motutapu locations by Pita Turei, Paul Johansson and Stan Wolfgramm the book offers, for the extended diaspora of Moana Oceania, a way for reconnection and reconciliation and as a reminder of what joins communities across time and space.

“Motutapu reminds me of the Tongan practice of Tauhi vā (to nurture or maintain relational space), as a metaphor of this sacred in-between space, an island straddled between the deep moana and the fonua of the mainland . . . When Brendan and I first embarked on this journey we were unaware of where this would lead us, but we now know this was a journey of restoration, healing and connection – to moana, fonua and ultimately with ‘Otua.”

Benjamin Work

“. . . Pita Turei, Paul Johansson and Stan Wolfgramm, who generously offered to guide interactions with each island, . . . The stories imparted by each knowledge-holder were offered through worldviews that leave space for multiplicities of knowledge, championing shared understandings that centre the question ‘What do you know it to mean?’. Their collective research offers an appreciation of three locations that have immense importance personally, while respectfully leaving space for others to tell their stories of these lands.”

From the foreword by Zoe Black

RRP $70.00

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Card-cover, perfect bound | 176 pages (indigo 130gsm Satin Matt) Cover (270gsm Bagdad Brown) 203mm x 254mm portrait
Limited edition of 250
ISBN 978-1-99-116520-6
Publication: August 2022

For all wholesale orders and requests info@rimbooks.com

Motutapu: Benjamin Work & Brendan Kitto Book Launch, 2pm 6th August 2022, Te Uru.

Motutapu: Benjamin Work & Brendan Kitto Book Launch, 2pm 6th August 2022, Te Uru.

The exhibition MOTUTAPU, at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery (11 June – 11 September 2022) will be completed by the launch of the book of the same title by Benjamin and Brendan, at 2pm, 6th of August at Te Uru, 420 Titirangi Road. All invited.

photo: Brendan kitto
photo: Brendan kitto
photo: Brendan kitto

Motutapu: Benjamin Work and Brendan Kitto.
With foreword by Zoe Black, essays by Pita Turei, Paul Johansson, Stan Wolfgramm and the artists. 176pp soft cover, 203mm x 254mm portrait, designed by Shaun Naufahu and Giordano Zatta and published by Rim Books. Limited first edition of 250 copies.

‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a: Ancient Futures
Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck
Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi
with contributing essays by
Dr. Billie Lythberg, Dr. Phyllis Herda Dr. Melenaite Taumoefolauand  Dr. Seini Taufa
Contemporary artists, academics and master practitioners of Tongan art celebrate the treasures of the Kingdom of Tonga and the history of their dispersal throughout world institutions and collections.
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