A Vocabulary

Bruce Connew

Te Kōngahu Museum of Waitangi
Waitangi Treaty Grounds
Tau Henare Drive, Waitangi

19 February – 22 May 2022

A Vocabulary is the result of several years of photographer Bruce Connew’s roaming memorials and gravestones of Aotearoa’s colonial wars. The exhibition comprises 79 photographs from these memorials and graves as well as He Mōteatea and essay by Dr Rangihīroa Panoho.

The exhibition contains photographs and texts which address the casualties of colonisation. The physical remnants of these wars are scattered across mostly Te Ika-a-Maui North Island, as residual memory, misremembered, or not remembered. A book of the same name accompanies the exhibition.

A Vocabulary (Vapour Momenta Books, 2021) was designed by Catherine Griffiths and Bruce Connew, and includes He Moteatea and essay by Dr Rangihīroa Panoho. The book was listed as one of three top reads from 2020 by Paul Diamond on Radio New Zealand.

We need your help to continue providing a year-round programme of online reviews, interviews, portfolios, videos and listings that is free for everyone to access. We’d also like to dream bigger with the services we offer to photographers and the visual arts.
We’ve partnered with Press Patron to give readers the opportunity to support PhotoForum Online.
Every donation helps.