Interpreting art through a Maori lens
Nathan Pohio talks to Charlie Gates about what inspires his artwork.
The artwork that won Christchurch artist Nathan Pohio a Walters Prize nomination brings together three of his major preoccupations – movies, Maori culture and horses.
The work, created for the Scape Public Art festival in Christchurch last year, is a large reproduction of a 1905 photograph of Lord Plunket in his early motorcar, visiting Maori leaders on horseback at the Tuahiwi marae north of Christchurch. Pohio believes some of the Maori leaders in the photograph would be from his hapu, Ngai Tuahuriri, which is part of the Ngai Tahu iwi.
The powerful image is now on display outside the Auckland Art Gallery as part of the exhibition for the Walters Prize, which is named after abstract artist Gordon Walters and is the country’s largest contemporary art prize.
Pohio, 47, is one of four New Zealand artists nominated for the 2016 prize, which will be announced on Friday.
His nominated artwork, which looks like a still from a Western movie, marks a key moment in modern Maori history and includes horses – a motif Pohio often returns to as a powerful symbol of his world view.
‘‘It is like a summation of the process and the way I find things,’’ he says.
Born in Christchurch, Pohio went to Aranui High School, before studying art at night school at Hagley College in 1989. He started at Ilam School of Fine Arts in 1990 and graduated in 1997, after a gap year in 1994.
‘‘I went there to be a painter. That is what I thought I was going to be doing. But then I got first place for photography and film,’’ he says.
In his graduate year he secured a $14,000 Creative New Zealand grant to make a film about Christchurch rock legend Ritchie Venus. The Ballad of Ritchie Venue was completed in 1998.
‘‘That was where I learnt that I didn’t want to be a filmmaker,’’ he says.
‘‘It taught me that a film will take two years of your life. I just thought I had ideas I wanted to turn out quicker than that.’’
‘‘I decided at that point that I would focus on video artworks.’’
But his artworks have always been informed by his love of movies.
‘‘The movies are always there. They are a part of the source material.’’
‘‘At first, I was making movies about movies and artworks about movies, but then I got really interested in pre-cinema history, things like camera obscuras and magic lanterns.’’
His research led him to a horse called Occident, who played a key role in the development of early cinema. In the 19th century, English photographer Eadweard Muybridge was called in to settle a bet on whether all four hooves left the ground at the same time when a horse galloped. Muybridge developed a system that photographed Occident galloping multiple times. He displayed the images together in an early form of a cinema projector that showed the horse in motion and captured all four hooves off the ground at the same time.
Pohio was inspired by the device to create one of his breakthrough artworks, Asleightofhandmanoeuvringofastillimageintosomethingmoving.
The 2004 video artwork features kaleidoscopic images of horses galloping.
’’I sat on that material for two years. I wasn’t confident about what I had. I thought it was either great or terrible.’’
It was displayed at the Jonathan Smart gallery in 2006 and then purchased by Te Papa.
He sees the horse as a symbol for a key moment in modern Maori history.
‘‘In the timeline of Maori history it represents a particular point and that is the beginning of modernity and that is where my view of the world begins.
‘‘That is where contemporary Maori society has its inception and modernity enters the timeline.’’
Pohio’s fascination with contemporary Maori culture also plays a role in his job at the Christchurch Art Gallery.
He has been an exhibition designer for the gallery since 2004 and became an assistant curator just two months ago.
He curates shows that interpret the gallery’s collection through a Maori lens. One show featured landscapes by Pakeha artists with commentary from Ngai Tahu academic and company director Tipene O’Regan. Another collected watercolours by 19th century surveyors of landscapes with importance to local Maori.
‘‘There is not much Maori representation in the collection, and that is being really kind, so the projects I am doing are a response to that.
‘‘The artworks are European and have taken a very European approach to what they are doing and how they do it, but I am arguing that within that there are other views and ideas.
‘‘It all becomes material to me. I look at the collection, and all these things that make up an exhibition, as material. Whereas I think a curator would typically gather bodies of work with a particular narrative in mind.
‘‘I am looking at the collection as material from which to bring a particular perspective on the world.’’
Pohio says everything he creates is informed by his Maori world view.
‘‘It has always been there in my work, even as a student. Everything I did was coming from my experience, which was contemporary Maori society’s world view.
‘‘I am trying to instil a Maori value in my work.’’