Repatriation

Repatriation

Areta Wilkinson + Mark Adams

Two Rooms

18 Putiki Street, Newton, Auckland

20 September - 20 October 2018

Areta Wilkinson and Mark Adams, Z6469 Cheviot Hill. Collections of Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK, 2017, Cyanotype blueprint.

A residency at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University, UK between 2009-17, allowed Ngāi Tahu artist Areta Wilkinson and Pākehā artist Mark Adams to respond to collections in English and German museums. The pair produced unique silver bromide photograms of Ngāi Tahu taonga, stone tools, specimens of moa and other bones from archaic middens and archaeological sites on the east coast of Te Waipounamu. For Wilkinson, the project allowed a direct engagement with her whakapapa as a maker, and to produce new works from the absences in these photograms which directly reference the mātauranga Māori of her Moa-hunter ancestors. For Adams, the project opened a way of engaging with the colonial relationships these artifacts, taonga and specimens are enmeshed in without messing with them. Repatriation is a collaborative work returning the shades of this cultural material and new manifestations of it to our eyes here.