Raukura Turei (Ngā Rauru Kītahi, Taranaki, Ngāti Pāoa, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki)

To create her unique paintings, Raukura Turei physically applies aumoana, pale-blue clay,taken from her rohe, ancestral land, with her hands and fingers. The paint is applied in a remarkably tactile and almost sculptural way atop an underpainting that subtly carries the abstracted curves of her own body. 

This extraordinary methodology seamlessly brings together the whenua of hertūrangawaewae and her own body so that each work expresses her unbreakable connection to the land, and her located physical form; each of these is crucial to understanding one’s identity within Te Ao Māori. 

Depicting the curvature of the abstracted forms in an almost pointillist style, Turei’s works are dynamic, shifting and shimmering – and appear to move as the viewer passes them. To perceive each work in its entirety, the viewer must move their own body, reading the work’s lenticular effect as they shift this way and that. The viewer is brought back to their own physicality, the position of their body and the feeling of movement, which connects the viewer with their own body in space and in its connection to place.

The shimmering canvases from this series evoke the wiriwiri, or the flickering, interstitial movement between spaces and states, and between day and night. These works occupy the space of te whai ao – the light before dawn. Turei invokes Hine-Ruhi, the deity associated with dawn, who is said to be seen in the sparkle of light in the morning dew. She also speaks of deities such as Hine-te-Iwaiwa (atua of fertility and te whare pora – the female arts), Hine-Awatea (first light of day) and Hina-Uri (the deity of the moon and her deep charcoal hues), each of whom is present in the shifting quality of light across her canvases.

As Turei explains, “In paying homage to the vibrancy of Hine-Ruhi my works take on her energy.” This energy then transmits to each viewer, who, in moving with the undulations of line and reading the whenua (land) painted on the canvas, might also connect with the energy of the atua wāhine and sense the power of mātauranga Māori.

Selected photography: Sam Hartnett. Images courtesy of the artist.