RESURRECTION
For her first public work in Christchurch, multidisciplinary artist Aroha Novak has immersed herself in the history of indigenous botany.
Aroha Novak (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Kahungunu) is known for her sculptures and installations being shown outside of traditional spaces. As part of Stickum, a collective of Dunedin artists, she’s produced community murals in Otago, Auckland and Canterbury, often uncovering local histories in the process.
“I’ve always been drawn to public work that’s accessible. It’s a cool way to connect with a community,” she enthuses.
This summer, nine billboards will be erected around Hagley Park, featuring Aroha’s art in a circuit that she hopes will “create a narrative” for walkers.
Researching the pre-colonial history of the space, Aroha had to fall back on the “white, male, colonial perspective” of early historians. While she believes “it’s good to highlight the whakapapa of the research”, some of those histories have since been contested, so she kept looking.
“I fell into a research rabbit hole when I came across the notations of a few early European botanists who described the endemic plant life before the area became Hagley Park. It was quite swampy ground then,” she explains.
In a paper by E. M. Herriott in 1919, citing botanist J. B. Armstrong’s work in the 1860s, Aroha found a list of 88 indigenous plants and “decided to try and track them down”. Luckily, the artist found a rich resource in the “amazing” Ines Schonberger of Manaaki Whenua (Landcare Research) who manages the Allan Herbarium in Lincoln, an archive full of plant specimens from the 1850s and 1860s that includes indigenous species.
“The pressed plants are now digitised, so I could see them from home – they look like photocopied versions of themselves now, all washed out. They almost look like ghosts of the past,” Aroha says.
The artist’s mission is to put these endemic plants back into the landscape in which they once belonged. Botanical imagery will be interspersed with text on large-scale boards.
A primary material chosen by Aroha is the unnatural yet colourful scrim – a mesh that covers scaffolding. “I look at materials in the landscape of the site, and in Christchurch city there is so much construction going on!” The images are embroidered onto the scrim using thick wool and fat knitting needles.
The mum of three has been learning te reo Māori, so identifying the names of these native plants has helped solidify that; “I’m fascinated with the way language orders things,” she muses. “Māori is an official language, it should be seen – I don’t want it to be a ghost like these endemic species have become. With this SCAPE work, I’m trying to honour the past.”