January 01, 2022
Māori art vision informs nationhood
For Nigel Borell, Māori art is integral to understanding this country, Aotearoa – and his New Year’s Honour shows many others have similar thoughts.
The artist and former Māori curator at Toi o Tāmaki Auckland City Art Gallery has been made a Member of the Order of New Zealand for services to Māori.
“It was a surprise to me and very humbling,” says Nigel Borell. “It’s also a chance to reflect on the work you do in the sector.”
That work for the past five or so years has been putting together Toi Tū Toi Ora, a massive survey of contemporary Māori art which drew 191,000 visitors during its four-month run.
The book-length catalogue should be out in March.
“It’s been timely, the exhibition and the thinking that sat behind it. In retrospect, I have been excited and surprised at how broadly embraced it has been by Māori and Pākehā.
“Art inspires us to understand the land we live on. People have captured the meaning of that in their own experience.”
When Toi Tū Toi Ora opened at the end of 2020, Borell had put in his notice with reports later emerging of his frustration with gallery management which still thought it could dictate the terms of Māori engagement.
It has taken a year to replace him, including an additional step of creating a middle management position of kaupapa Māori manager.
Nigel Borell says major institutions need Māori curators and the fact that Auckland didn’t have one until 1999 meant there was a lot of catching up to do.
Māori artists were under-represented in public exhibitions and collections, and it was left to the Māori Writers Association, Ngā Puna Waihanga, and artists like the late Para Matchitt, Cliff Whiting and Sandy Adsett to try to carve out a place.
The fact that almost all Maori artists of the modernist generation were also educators means they were also able to build influence outside.
Nigel Borell, from Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, and Te Whakatōhea, had a hands-on introduction to the Māori arts, working on three meeting house projects under tohunga whakairo Pakariki Harrison from 1995 to 2000.
He was associate curator Māori Art at Auckland War Memorial Museum in 2015 when the job came up across town. He was immediately thrown into the showing of ‘The Māori Portraits: Gottfried Lindauer’s New Zealand’ which toured to San Francisco in 2017.
Since leaving Toi o Tāmaki, Nigel Borell has exhibited his own work and continued curating including the opening show for the Wairau Māori Art Galley at the Hundertwasser Centre in Whangārei which opens in February.
He also starts 2022 with a new role as the curator of taonga Māori back at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.