Te Ara: Te Hokinga Mai

Te Ara: Māori Pathways of Leadership, the exhibition of taonga and Krzysztof Pfeiffer photography curated by Paul Tapsell and Merata Kawharu, returns to Aotearoa on Friday 28 March. Te Ara has toured Poland, the UK, Germany and Canada for more than three years and now will go on show at the Rotorua Museum, where a pōwhiri on Friday will welcome a delegation from the Musqueam Indian Band of Vancouver, who are escorting Te Ara home. 

Ngā mihi mahana ki a Krzysztof, Merata rāua ko Paul mo tō koutou mahi whakamīharo.

Libro International is proud to publish the accompanying book Te Ara. Oratia Media has supported the exhibition with project management since its inauguration in Olstyn, Poland in September 2010.

Māori Maps at the National Library

Māori Maps is one of the innovative organisations featured in an exhibition that opened yesterday at the National Library of NZ /Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. If you're in Wellington check out the Leading Edge exhibition -http://natlib.govt.nz/visiting/wellington/leadingedge

Te Ara exhibition opens in Vancouver

Oratia launches new trilingual book featuring Musqueam alongside Māori and English

The exhibition Te Ara: Māori Pathways of Leadership, opens today in Vancouver, Canada, in the final stage of its world tour before returning to New Zealand in February 2014.

Featuring photographs by Krzysztof Pfeiffer taken over a five-year period, and curated by Paul Tapsell and Merata Kawharu, Te Ara is a visual survey of leadership in the Māori world – past, present and future. It premiered in Poland in 2010 and has since shown at major museums in the UK and Germany.

The exhibition is being hosted by the Musqueam Indian Band, the First Peoples of the Vancouver area, and is showing at the Musqueam Gallery in the British Columbian capital.

Accompanying the opening was the launch of the third edition of the exhibition book. Te Ara features photographs from the exhibition with extended text by Paul Tapsell reviewing

leadership and challenges for Māori today.

The book is believed to be the first featuring both Canadian and New Zealand indigenous languages, with a landmark Musqueam translation – one of very few texts in the language – alongside Te Reo Māori and English. Copies are available in Canada and New Zealand.

"Our conversation is indigenous to indigenous with the Musqueam, but it is a story to which everyone is invited to come along and listen in," said Tapsell, who is visiting Vancouver.           

Te Ara: Māori Pathways of Leadership will be at the Musqueam Gallery, 4000 Musqueam Avenue, Vancouver, until 28 February 2014.

Professor Paul Tapsell and Associate Professor Merata Kawharu teach in the Māori Studies department at the University of Otago, Dunedin; Krzysztof Pfeiffer is an internationally recognised photographer based in Auckland who has contributed to more than 35 books.

Read more in the Vancouver Sun

Te Ara: Māori Pathways of Leadership

Release Date: 9 August 2013  |  ISBN: 978-1-877514-60-9  |  RRP $21.99

Paperback, 210 x 297 mm landscape, 32 pages, colour

To arrange an interview, images, extracts or a review copy, contact:

Peter Dowling  027 614 8993   peter@oratiamedia.com

Libro International, a division of Oratia Media

www.librointernational.com   |    www.oratiamedia.com

Te Ara comes to Germany

Te Ara is now on in Hamburg. On Sunday 7 October the exhibition opened at the Museum of Ethnology to coincide with the rededication of the wharenui Rauru. Te Ara features photos by Krzysztof Pfeiffer, and was curated by Paul Tapsell and Merata Kawharu.

Photos by Peter Dowling ©

Chris Hoult show opens in Wellington

Chris Hoult is pioneering the handcrafted photographic technique of gum oil printing in New Zealand. His exhibition opens in Wellington tomorrow; here's what Chris has to say about the printing process.

Making gum oil prints

Ironically I discovered the gum oil process through the digital system. When Kodak sold out of the black & white film market I began researching alternative processes, and as luck would have it I bought two books on TradeMe. One was by Karl Koenig, who had developed the gum oil process. The process is long and involved, which probably explains why I am, as far as I know, the only Kiwi doing them and one of only a few worldwide.

First an enlarged black & white positive is made, then a contact print is made using a sheet of watercolour paper that has been precoated the night before in a light-sensitive emulsion. The print is exposed in direct sunlight, washed, and then oil paint is rubbed into the exposed print. After a day the print is washed and then, depending on results, is bleached, etched or in some cases worked with a sable brush to create individual prints.

I love being able to manipulate my prints physically, I love the fact that my contact prints are made in direct sunlight and dry in the wind. I love it that I have no control over those elements and that, combined with the enormous variables involved in the process itself, gives each handcrafted print its own unique beauty.

Chris is also the author of Out West, which Libro's Peter Dowling edited when at Reed Books, and we are working with Chris now on further book projects.