Maori Legends: Some Myths and Legends of the Maori People nā Alistair Campbell i tuhi; nā Robin White kā whakaahua. Paraparaumu, N.Z.: Viking Sevenseas, c1969.
Dame Robin White (Ngāti Awa, b.1946) graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art from Elam School of Fine Arts in 1967, then spent a year at Teachers’ Training College in 1968. She lived at Bottle Creek from 1969-1971, teaching part-time. Late in 1971 she moved to the Otago Peninsula and became a full-time painter, living and working in Otago for a decade. In 1982 she moved to the Republic of Kiribati with her family, working with the Baha’i faith community and making art with a variety of media. In 1999 she returned to Aotearoa and now resides in Masterton, continuing to paint and create as well as collaborating with artists from across the Pacific. She is having a retrospective of 50 years of her artwork at Te Papa from June 2022.
This pukapuka, published in 1969, is one of the first examples of a published book with illustrations by a Māori artist in the Heritage Collections and signifies the shift from Māori stories being visually represented from a Pākeha viewpoint, to a Māori worldview. Because of this, we refer to this as our first pou – a metaphorical pillar which sets the foundations for this exhibition. The pūrākau inside are retold by writer and poet Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, who has been described by poet Robert O’Sullivan as, “a foreparent of bicultural and multicultural writing in Aotearoa.”
Maori Legends: Some Myths and Legends of the Maori People nā Alistair Campbell i tuhi; nā Robin White kā whakaahua. Paraparaumu, N.Z.: Viking Sevenseas, c1969.
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