Mā te Wā

Shannon Te Ao

Mossman Gallery, Wellington

12 September - 10 October 2020

Reviewed by Arihia Latham for PhotoForum

Walking into the gallery and becoming immersed in the images by Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Wairangi) at his latest exhibition named Mā te Wā, there is a feeling of being part of something. The images invite us into movement, into angles of the body that mimic nature and are at once seamless and unsettling. I left wondering if I had dived deep enough to understand.

The arcs of shoulders, elbows, and the vulnerable skin of the neck as the head is turned to the side are the dominant shapes in the work. The quality of the images is eerie and ethereal despite the visceral depictions of the body. The long exposures support the sense that there is a lot to absorb in each photograph and the blurred outlines and background feels as though it represents the passage of time.

Mā te wā means see you soon, or in time. It feels like a homage to something beyond the images and discovering that the background imagery in this body of work is from Te Ao’s own film Ka Mua Ka Muri, settles this feeling, kia tau. The images are digital prints produced from film scans and document a live performance in the studio. The background is made from moving images and comes from Te Ao's own filmic archive.

We are meant to feel immersed in the past and the future in these images, we are encouraged to take in the aching beauty of each photograph and then get caught in the detail of shadow and softness. Like whakapapa, when we look at any person, we might see all of their ancestors behind them if we look closely or for long enough. The movement in the background draws the focus to the foreground, while subtly carrying you somewhere unknown. The figure in focus is not identifiable, their face mostly in shadow or tuned away meaning the background becomes more relevant as akin to the ancestors to the presented figure in this work.

Curiously, the images are named for seemingly obscure body parts. Maikuku are the fingernails, Korokoro the throat, Pūkahukahu are the lungs. This is an invitation to acknowledge the less seen or significant parts of ourselves, the detail, knowing they don’t exist in silo from the rest of the body, that we don’t exist alone from the rest of the whānau.

“They are empowering images for me. They are about difficult parts of my whakapapa, not about a difficult sense of identity” Says Te Ao of his latest work.

As part of his kōrero on these works Te Ao talks about how he wanted an Alfred Hitchcock like set up of the background moving to indicate travel. He spoke of his own relationship with the road in the film.

“It’s the road to (one of) my marae, to the urupā where my father is buried.”

The figure in his work carries responsibilities. In this work they are at once themselves, they represent the artist, and they play people he is related to, or someone else that the work is tethered to. Te Ao talks about how he remembers speaking to his Grandmother about his Dad, walking that same road, at the same age as the subject in the images. He realised that these stories are non- linear, and as a result, neither is his work.

So as we curl into the detail then step back into the immersive experience of all of the images as a literal ‘body’ of work, and the movement that is present in each still, there is a sense of all of the stories that are suggested. The images named Pīpīwharauroa II are of a bent figure, the face unseen, and the focus on arms clasped behind the body in motion, wing-like. Again, they are visually beguiling and could just be seen as that. Yet understanding the role of the figure is what gives the work its depth and edge.

Te Ao acknowledges the recurring theme of Pīpīwharauroa (shining cuckoo) in his life, culminating in having the birds tattooed on his feet. The work suggests someone wishing to be a bird, and references the tenuous existence those birds have. Having grown up in Australia as Māori, the displacement of these shining cuckoos fascinated him. The fact that they lay their eggs in the nest of the Riroriro (grey warbler) to be raised by them as one of their young when they didn’t belong parallels many concepts in human relations. Te Ao is interested in how we are asked to be like both the Pīpīwharauroa and Riroriro.

“It represents jumping in and out of roles, it’s a reflection of how we are required to relate to or be many things in our lives and how that is unique to our existence in this time.”

He likens it to how most people are so aware of global politics now, and how the pandemic has in some ways lessened the distance between us in the world, while making us all unable to interact physically. Having shows in Canada and the Edinburgh Art Festival this year that he couldn’t attend, this sense of displacement and responsiveness is very real for the artist.

Visually sensorial, visceral yet something more than that, something untouchable. Te Ao feels he has hit a new place in his creative process with this work. He speaks of the surprise he felt when they were completed.

“They're not really about what they look like, they're going to unlock something you can’t see in each person. But I think visually they are compelling and so that is just fine by me too.”

This was the last show at the Mossman Gallery, the final chance to walk up the linoleum staircase from the 1970’s and walk into the soothing cradle of its walls filled with visual satisfaction. The fact that Te Ao’s exhibition is the final one seems no coincidence. These images of flight or travel, of moving on, yet being grounded on the road home, are a beautiful balm for this strange year. ‘Mā te wā’ is what we might say to each other when we are not sure when we will see each other again.

Arihia Latham is a Kāi Tahu Māori writer, traditional rongoā Māori health practitioner, facilitator and Māmā in Wellington, Aotearoa (New Zealand). Her work has been published by Huia, Landfall, Oranui, Foodcourt, Te Whē, Awa Wāhine, The Spinoff and Pantograph Punch. She has presented at Verb festival, NZ Festival of the Arts and Te Hā.

Published with support from Creative New Zealand.