CULTURE

ONE WOMAN SHOW

Harris Street in central Wellington used to be home to The Women’s Gallery (1979-2003). City Gallery now sits near the original site and hosts an exhibition dedicated to a founding member of the Women’s Gallery, Joanna Margaret Paul. Imagined in the Context of a Room displays Paul’s painting, drawings, poetry, photography, and experimental film work. Her work, spanning 30 years from the 1970s to the 2000s, was both deeply personal and quietly political, legitimising her experience as a woman and a mother, and as a feminist interested in the interior and domestic.

MINISTER OF FICTION

Documenting the personal possessions of his uncle was a mammoth task for artist Lucien Rizos. His uncle, Gerald O’Brien, was Labour MP for Island Bay from 1968 to 1979. On his death in 2017, his private world of hand-written fictional histories, maps, painted figures, and imagined battles was discovered. Even his wife of 60 years hadn’t known about the world O’Brien had been creating since childhood. Rizos has photographed and documented it in Everything, showing at Te Pataka Toi Adam Art Gallery. ON THE HUNT

Disability activist and writer Robyn Hunt is Toi Pōneke’s inaugural deaf and/or disabled artist in residence. During her six-week stay in November and December Hunt will work on a collection of personal essays with a disability focus. Primarily a non-fiction writer, Hunt also helped co-found creative writing group Crip the Lit to help deaf and disabled writers have a voice in mainstream writing. WELL FRAMED THEATRE

When Malia Johnston studied dance at UNITEC in Auckland, the dance studios were in the old Carrington Psychiatric Hospital, where author Janet Frame spent time. This sparked a lasting interest in one of New Zealand’s most famous writers, and has culminated in a collaboration with Red Leap Theatre to produce Owls Do Cry. The adaption of the book for stage takes a multidisciplinary approach, with Frame’s rich imagery reimagined as physical and visual theatre. At Circa Theatre from 3 November.

LIE OF THE LAND

Hidden dramas of power and politics lie beneath the surface of landscape painting, according to Te Papa’s historical art curator Rebecca Rice. “There is no such thing as a ‘simple, realistic’ picture of land.” The new exhibition Hiahia Whenua | Landscape and Desire mixes contemporary landscapes with historical ones, and explores how artists past and present have expressed their relationships with the land in Aotearoa.

The length of the motu is represented with works depicting landscapes from Kororāreka in the far north to Tamatea in Fiordland.

WAVE ENERGY

The vast oceans surrounding Aotearoa have an enduring influence on our cultural histories – this being the premise for the National Library’s major November to May exhibition. The Long Waves of Our Ocean seeks to draw connections between established authors and early-career Māori and Pacifica artists. The artists will be commissioned to respond to a series of texts relating to the ocean in its various roles – as ancestor, pathway, influence, provider, and threat. The exhibition is curated by Hanahiva Rose (pictured). PARTY OF FIVE

It’s cool to kōrero at Footnote Dance Company. The 2022 ChoreroCo season features five emerging dancers and the work of choreographer Elijah Kennar, who will present the third work in his trilogy Mea Uma. ChoreroCo is an initiative established in 2014, providing short-term contracts for three to five dancers. A first paid dance contract helps establish them as freelance artists. TRUSTED VOICE

With a collection of over 550 art works, the Fletcher Trust Collection is one of the most prestigious private art collections in New Zealand. This year an exhibition marks the 60th anniversary of the corporation’s collecting. The New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata assembles a selection of the collection’s pictures depicting figures. Gathered Voices tells the story of this country and those who call it home.

Showing New Zealand art to Wellington since 1882.

Contemporary art, gifts and indulgences or unique venue hire.

Visit our beautiful waterfront galleries, open daily: 10 – 5 pm Free entry.

PLAYING HOUSE

Mothballed since 2020, the Hannah Playhouse has acquired new funding, new management, and a new modus operandi. Wellington City Council and the Hannah Playhouse Trust are collaborating to re-open the venue as an affordable theatre space for developing the professional performing arts sector. Creative Capital head Gisella Carr says, “Theatre laboratories are a known development tool across the world. We welcome actors, directors, choreographers, dancers, musicians, composers, literary performers as well as the city’s arts organisations, to consider how the Hannah might be of interest to them.”

FIT FOR PURPOSE

Cross-fit with dance moves is how choreographer Sarah Foster-Sproull describes her new work To The Forest // To The Island. The distinguished graduate returns to the New Zealand School of Dance to direct her new work. It is one of five contemporary works being showcased in the school’s 55th Anniversary Performance Season showing mid November. The contemporary works will be performed on alternate nights with five classical ballet works playing on alternate nights. HEAVENLY VOICE

Giant of the symphonic stage Mahler features in Heavenly, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s November tour. The final movement of his fourth symphony will feature lyric soprano Madeleine Pierard (pictured). The New Zealander regularly sings in the United Kingdom, her most recent engagement at the Royal Opera House being credited with “stylistic panache.” ACCLAIMED CLAY

Pots of talent are on display at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. Local pottery award Ceramicus features Wellington Potter’s Association members. Norwegian-born Karin Amdal (work pictured), who now lives and works on the Kāpiti Coast, is adjudicating the annual award. The full time potter also holds a Master of Design and a Diploma of Ceramic Art.

Follow us : Not to be missed

Splash and Ceramicus 2022

5 - 20 November 2022 The New Zealand Watercolour Society and Wellington Potters’ Association wonderful Annual Shows.

Summer

9 December - January 2023 An Academy members’ exhibition of art of all styles and genres.

Tarrant show

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOSIAH NEVELL

The Queen of Cuba Street is being priced out. She talks to John Bristed about leaving “her building and her street.”

Istarted teaching when I was 14 and never stopped.”

Deirdre Tarrant says “her” Barber's building, home of the Tarrant Dance Studio and Footnote New Zealand Dance, was given by the Borren family to the Nikau Trust to administer as part of a bequest to Victoria University. The building is now being handled by a property management company. Deirdre Tarrant says sadly the rents they want have become unaffordable, and the studio is to close.

For nearly 50 years Tarrant-trained dancers have appeared in every imaginable dance chance in Wellington. There have been end-of-year performances, Christmas parades, Chinese New Year celebrations, Kids Magic, Artsplash, Cuba Dupa, carnivals, and innumerable openings, closings, and community celebrations. Many of her dancers have become internationally successful. Think Amit Noy, Lucy Marinkovich, Elizabeth Alpe, Oliver Connew, Joanne Kelly, among many.

Deirdre Tarrant began and managed Footnote Dance Company for 30 years, and says a key reason that company succeeded was that the Tarrant studio provided a home for it.

Her final effort for the Tarrant Dance Studio will be a series of films projected on the outside of their 125 Cuba St studios to celebrate and honour the vitality and energy the dancers have added to the street.

This year’s dance scholars will be filmed dancing at the Opera House, another performance space with many memories for Deirdre. She held her first show there in 1966. The film and others will run from December 8 to 14.

Don’t expect Deirdre to disappear, though: “I’ll be teaching dance somewhere,” she says.

The much awarded Deirdre Tarrant CNZOM fell in love with dance seventy-odd years ago when she had her first ballet classes as a seven-year-old. “My mother was a painter and on Thursday went to art classes, so she sent me to ballet.”

Dance became her major interest. She danced all the way through school whenever and wherever she could. She wasn’t at all discouraged by Jean Horne, her teacher, telling her aged 12: “You’ll never dance, you’re too tall.” At 14, with her sisters, she taught her first ballet pupils in Upper Hutt.

For three years she found herself parts as an extra with the Royal NZ Ballet, which had only six or eight full-time dancers in those days. And at 15 she toured New Zealand with the troupe.

Deirdre was on her way, but her dad told her that if she wanted to be a dancer she had to get herself a university degree. So off she went to Dunedin to become a doctor – but in Dunedin, there were no ballet classes. So she promptly came back to Wellington, where she completed a BA, and was awarded a dance scholarship which she took to London.

As a 19-year-old in London she did “anything and everything” to survive, teaching, working, and studying. She learnt a lot as a demonstrator at summer courses with the remarkable Russian-trained classical ballet teacher Maria Fay, a teacher at the Royal Ballet School. Later Deirdre travelled on three-month teaching contracts in Canada and America.

That big overseas experience was seminal, in that she discovered with “huge excitement” that there were more kinds of dance than what she calls “valid” ballet, the ballet of “turned out and pointed toes”. Robert Cohan started doing contemporary dance in London, his classes attracting “everybody” at a time when there was no contemporary dance scene in New Zealand.

This swung her away from ballet toward contemporary dance, and at the same time she became more interested in production and choreography.

She spent eight years mostly in London. There were lots of auditions, and many appearances as a dancer on stage and on TV in France, Scandinavia, London, Canada, and the United States.

Deirdre came home to be a teacher at the New Zealand School of Ballet (now the NZ School of Dance) and started a family.

But she’d made amazing contacts, and she says now, “My avowed intent was not to spend the whole year living in New Zealand. Keeping contacts internationally was so important.” She went to Canada in the northern summer for 11 years to teach at the Banff Dance Academy.

In Cuba Street, the wonderful old Barber’s building at number 125 (which started out as a dye works and at one stage hosted the local Communist Party) first became a dance school nearly 100 years ago. First there was Kathleen O’Brien in the 1930s. She was followed by Dorothy Daniels, who was an examiner for the Royal Ballet, and then Valerie Bayley. Ballet paintings from those earlier times still hang on the walls.

Deirdre Tarrant took over in 1976, and with her special brand of enthusiasm has been teaching ever since. The polished wooden floors have felt the feet of many thousands of aspiring dancers of all ages. “There are grandmothers who came here, their daughters, and even their granddaughters. And now the mothers and grandmothers come and watch, and its lovely.” Deirdre particularly likes to teach young dancers.

A woman she didn’t recognise walked up the studio stairs recently. She explained that she used to dance there. And now she was 68. She said “I just want to see if it’s the same. I’m so glad to see that people are still dancing and the room is full of people.”

Deirdre Tarrant is sad that “the nature of Cuba Street is changing as buildings are being bought by corporations. Many of the buildings in the street have been owner-operated and people cooperated and the street had a real feel.” “These studios have such a history. Leaving is going to be hard.”

Spirit level

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDY HANSEN

Sustainable values and the values of Te ao Māori are being incorporated into architectural practice. Rachel Helyer Donaldson discusses this with three players in the Wellington scene.

We create the built environment so we have a massive responsibility for climate change. And if we’re not doing something about it, then who is?”

Stephen McDougall, a director of Studio Pacific Architecture, speaks of the duty of care he says all architects and landscape architects (along with the rest of the construction industry) must exercise, if the world is to be pulled back from the brink of climate catastrophe. The construction sector is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and landfill.

There is, he says, an opportunity to make great changes. “The sustainable built environment must meet the needs of future generations. It’s about doing what’s right for both people and place.”

Stephen says Pākehā architects and landscape architects can learn a lot from Te ao Māori (the Māori world view), in which sustainability is deeply rooted. Collaborating on projects, architects can do this if they “sit alongside” mana whenua.

“Just being together, listening, and learning to build trust is the start of any co-design process. It’s how we develop our understanding of Mātauranga Māori, tikanga and story-telling.” He sees such patient collaboration as vital to ensuring “an enduring and sustainable built environment.”

Studio Pacific has been working with Tauranga City Council and the Otamataha Trust, which represents mana whenua, on a $300 million civic precinct intended to revitalise the city centre. To be called Te Manawataki o Te Papa, it will include a new library, museum, civic whare for council and community meetings, an exhibition space, and an upgraded art gallery. The involvement of mana whenua is vital, and the work includes regular meetings with kaumatua.

“We look to them to guide us. They may not be designers, but they know their place, the history, their stories. We’re the catalysts.”

Stephen follows advice from Professor Piri Sciascia, who was Government House’s Kaumatua until he died in 2020. Asked about improving cultural intelligence, “He talked about hokey pokey ice cream: If you’ve got issues or challenges, just have an ice cream, have a cup of tea. It’s about building a relationship, and just spending time together.”

Currently there are “very few” Māori architects and landscape architects in Aotearoa, and Stephen has observed that those few are “often burdened with taking charge of these processes. The young are having to learn fast to take on that responsibility. Most have broad shoulders and deep reserves.”

Wellington-based architect Whare Timu and landscape architect Tama Whiting, who are profiled on the following pages, began their careers at Studio Pacific, leaving in 2018. “They both left on the same day, the buggers!” says Stephen.

It was emotional. “Losing the two of them and also celebrating them: people move on to do other things. Tama was heading off to America and Whare was off to work at First Light and find his feet in another way.”

Among the gifts showered on the pair was a copy of Dr Seuss’s Oh the Places You’ll Go! It was for Tama, but, Stephen says it was “a fitting tribute to both of them”.

Stephen is pleased to be working with Whare again. Now principal architect at Warren and Mahoney, he is involved in Tauranga’s civic precinct project. Meanwhile Whare and Tama are also collaborating on joint projects.

“I have a huge respect for them both. I’m very proud of the fact that we helped them get a foot in, that they had a place here; and they both made big contributions to Studio Pacific. Whare and Tama are natural leaders with their quiet, unassuming characters yet strong mana. They both have bright futures ahead of them.”

Tama Whiting

What to do with urban spaces can be a divisive issue in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, between heritage advocates and those who see intensification as the answer to the housing crisis. The meaning of community is always at the heart of the debate. Wellington could learn a lot from New York City, says landscape architect Tama Whiting, who recently returned to the capital after living and working there for three and a half years. “Denser living is better for building stronger communities, if designed well.”

In New York, wealthy and not-so-wealthy apartment dwellers alike use the available green spaces. “Whether you’re rich, poor or in between, you all use the same spots to socialise, to exercise, to relax, read, suntan, whatever.”

Higher-density living means that New Yorkers don’t spend their weekends weeding, hanging out in hardware stores, or doing DIY. Though DIY is “part of our Kiwi ingenuity culture”, Tama points out, “not everyone needs a huge lawn that they spend every weekend mowing. You'll probably be much better off with a smaller planter box that you can manage, producing stuff that you use, while giving yourself more free time to actually enjoy the weekend.”

It’s also “a very New Zealand thing” to spend weekends fixing your house, he adds. The housing stock needs it, being “quite run down or not well-insulated.”

It’s inevitable that Aotearoa’s cities will move to denser living, but the understanding of what that could look like needs to change. He has seen a lot of poor quality local developments, using cheap materials. “They don’t focus on best design practices, and will probably turn into really rundown or decrepit buildings in the near future.” It’s also crucial that public spaces are well designed and used. “With enough amenities and activities, then people feel like the park is better than their little plot of land.”

Tama, 30, is from Te Whānau-ā-Apanui in the eastern Bay of Plenty and East Coast regions, but was born and raised in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. He attended Miramar Central Primary, Evans Bay Intermediate, and Wellington College. He studied architecture at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University, and gained his Master of Landscape Architecture in 2017, while working for Studio Pacific Architecture. Then he bought a oneway ticket to New York, after landing a J1 Visa, drawn by his love of East Coast hip-hop. He knew no-one there but quickly found work, primarily for SCAPE, a landscape and urban design studio, which seeks positive change in communities via regenerative living infrastructure and new forms of public space.

Tama says he’s proud of having worked on largescale, high-calibre projects with some big-name clients including Facebook and Amazon.

His biggest achievement was being part of the core design team on the US$60 million revamp of a 30-acre waterfront park on the Mississippi River in Memphis. Tom Lee Park is named after a heroic African American river worker who saved more than 30 people from drowning when a steamboat capsized in 1925. The project involved working with renowned artist Theaster Gates to retell some of the black history from that area of Memphis, which began as an industrial area.

Tama is back in New Zealand – his J1 exchange visa ran out in January. He was unsuccessful in his application for America’s O1 Visa “for individuals of extraordinary ability”, the only option left open to him. The US visa system is extreme. There’s nothing in-between a Work and Travel Visa and being a world-renowned Nobel Peace Prize winner, in order to stay there, he said.

When his application was turned down, Tama had 14 days to leave the country, after creating a life there. But he was locked out of New Zealand despite months of trying to book an MIQ spot. He quit his job and headed to Mexico with longtime girlfriend Katarina, 26, an Ecuador-born New Yorker.

It was “pretty crazy” but everything worked out. He had saved for just this, knowing he might be locked out of New Zealand for a long time.

“I was jumping through countries where I could get a tourist visa. But it was honestly the best time I've ever had in my life, just travelling and not working.”

After Mexico, the couple flew to Italy, and back to New York, to pack up their apartment in Williamsburg in Brooklyn.

They have been in New Zealand since March, starting with a road trip that began at the Whiting family home, once owned by “my nanny and koro” (his grandfather was master carver Cliff Whiting). “Then we zig-zagged down the country.”

Returning to Aotearoa has been “definitely grounding [and] a lot less stress.” Between covid and the Black Lives Matter protests and the US elections, the past three years have been “pretty hectic” in New York. He and Katarina took part in several anti-racism protests in support of Black Lives Matter. Seeing body-bags stacked up outside the hospitals at the peak of the pandemic felt apocalyptic.

“Most people we knew knew someone, either family or friends, who had died of covid. All of that was pretty eyeopening, and it took its toll.”

The pair are currently living at Tama’s childhood home in Miramar. Tama has set up his own landscape architect consultancy, Maka Co-Lab, and is still consulting for SCAPE in New York. Tama and SCAPE are part of a design team working on Te Ara Tukutuku, the redevelopment of Auckland’s waterfront at Wynyard Point. The project, for Eke Panuku Development Auckland, will be co-designed with mana whenua, says Tama. It will also see him team up again with former Studio Pacific colleague Whare Timu.

Growing up, Tama was surrounded by artists – koro Cliff designed Te Papa's marae and was the museum's first kaihautū (leader). As a five-year-old, Tama and another child cut the ribbon to open Te Papa. Dad Dean Whiting is also a master carver and the kaihautū/director of Māori Heritage at Heritage NZ Pouhere Taonga. Painter Séraphine Pick is Dean’s first cousin – “we call her ‘aunty’”.

They were all big inspirations, he says, but it was Studio Pacific architect Stephen McDougall (also related by marriage) who swayed Tama toward the design side. “My cousin and I would go hang out in his studio. You’d see all the models and people doing drawings. I always thought it was super cool.” It was like being an artist, he says, “but slightly more technical and with computers. Seeing that as a kid was like, ‘Wow! They’ve got all this fancy gear’.” Stephen had “flash suits” and used to drive “fancy architect cars”, too. “It’s a bit superficial but when you're a kid you kind of look up to that!”

In New York Tama worked alongside indigenous communities such as Native American and African American communities to help them articulate their own design principles. These principles were based on “their cultural values, their own tribal principles that they might have for that particular area,” then their practical application to certain projects was worked through.

He says diversity in landscape architecture is vital for society, especially as we move towards densification, allowing designers to create “a sense of belonging, a sense of identity”, and impart a uniqueness to a place.

It also allows people who are underrepresented to see themselves in local spaces, after centuries of colonial design dominating cities the world over, he says. “It’s super important to start bringing forward some of these other narratives and histories.”

Whare Timu

Place has always been important to architect Whare Timu (Ngāti Kahungunu, Te Arawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa), in both his life and work. He is proud of coming from Heretaunga-Hastings which is, he says, “known for its qualities around place”, such as wide, open landscapes, and abundant orchards and vineyards. Whare’s father’s whānau is from Hawkes Bay, and their papakāinga, or place to return to, is Te Hauke, near Hastings.

Hawkes Bay is also where the late legendary John Scott came from. As one of New Zealand’s most highly regarded architects, he is renowned for his Māori mid-century modernist aesthetic.

Scott, of Taranaki and Te Arawa descent, is widely credited as the first Māori architect. His best-known building is Futuna Chapel in Karori, but he was prolific in Hawkes Bay, building more than 200 houses in the region. One of his earliest commissions was designing, in 1954, a chapel for St John’s College, the Catholic boys’ high school that he’d attended.

It all had a massive impact on the teenage Whare, who also went to St John’s, and over five years sat regularly in Scott’s chapel. “Learning about him opened up my world…. Once I knew who he was, I saw his architecture, no matter where I went.”

They also came from the same marae – Whare’s grandparents are buried next to John Scott at the Matahiwi Marae in Clive. After high school, Whare did an internship with Scott’s son, Jacob Scott, also an architect.

Now a principal, senior design lead, and cultural adviser at architects Warren and Mahoney, Whare says Scott’s stripped-down realist style of design, and the way he brought a te ao Māori sensitivity to architecture, has been a huge inspiration. Whare flourished at St John’s. He was the top academic student in his sixth-form year, and achieved results in the top five percent for national NCEA results in art, graphic design, and physics. He was enlisted by his teachers to help develop consenting plans and landscaping schemes for properties owned by the Marist Brothers.

It seemed that his path to architecture was all set. But the reality wasn’t so simple. Whare never planned to go

Right: Whare Timu

to university, because no one else in his family had. Then, when he was 17, Whare and his then-girlfriend had a baby daughter, Taylin. It didn’t faze his parents, who “weren’t too overbearing [and] fairly liberal.” His dad's family are “deep in the gang life”, he adds.

“My dad played a big part in forming the Mongrel Mob, so my life has been quite colourful. I was exposed to a lot of things pretty early."

School kept him focused, he says. “I always did well at school. I always had a knack for having quite strong working relationships with my teachers.”

He felt different, he adds. Although “All my family are patched”, he “always thought there was something else for me.”

His daughter’s birth was a chance for change. “Part of why I went down to Wellington was to get myself out of Hastings, to start afresh.”

Whare and his partner moved to Wellington when Taylin was one. He went to Wellington Architecture School at Victoria University, while his girlfriend went to teachers’ college.

“We went straight into flatting, and juggling family life with our study life.” They are no longer together, he says, but have a good relationship, sharing Taylin’s care. Taylin is now 17, the age he was when she was born. Whare, 35, says he’s happy to share his past. “It feels like it was yesterday, that she was just a baby in my arms!”

There were multiple scholarships for financial support, but architecture school was isolating. From his second year on, he was the only Māori student in his cohort at Victoria University. There were no Māori staff or lecturers to help him express “who I am as a Māori, to speak about the whenua, and moana, and the wai”.

He struggled to find a supervisor who understood what he was trying to do and eventually sought a critique from architect Derek Kawiti, then at Auckland University. His dissertation looked at “decolonising, declaiming and decarbonising” Wellington’s Te Aro Park, aka “Pigeon Park”, once the site of Te Aro pā. “He saw the struggle, and I’m grateful for him.”

He graduated with Honours, and his first job was at Studio Pacific Architecture for around a decade, working on largescale projects and government work, and collaborating with iwi and hapu in a co-design environment. He developed a cultural unit within the studio, boosting the company’s understanding of te ao Māori, te reo Māori and tikanga Māori.

From 2018, Whare worked at First Light Studio, before joining Warren and Mahoney in 2021 to lead their indigenous design unit, Te Matakīrea, as an associate principal. Six months later he was promoted to principal.

Te Matakīrea (meaning the sharp end of a spear, or to drive forward and advance) is dedicated to empowering indigenous architecture in Aotearoa, Australia, and around the Pacific Rim.

Whare heads a core team of around 10 people working across Warren and Mahoney’s seven studios, including Melbourne and Sydney. The unit includes experts in technology, sustainability, and cultural design.

Current projects include one in Seattle, with First Nation clients, and Tonga’s new Parliament. In Australia Te Matakīrea is working on the North East Link Project (NELP), a multibillion-dollar motorway scheme and the State of Victoria’s biggest-ever road project. The new freeway covers a lot of tribal areas and borders, and the unit is collaborating with Victoria’s first indigenous architect, Jefa Greenaway.

Co-design means architects must change their practice and thinking. There’s another layer to the design process: “the idea of a multi-layered kōrero, or conversation. Leaning in, with our ears first, and our pencils in our back pocket.”

Building relationships, understanding protocols, and using te reo Māori – both verbally and in documentation – go a long way. Understanding the Māori arrangement of spaces, such as where the ātea or courtyard traditionally goes, is crucial.

Sustainability goes hand in hand with mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge). But the concept of kaitiakitanga has been “warped” by central and local government, says Whare. “It’s probably the most bastardised word in our dictionary.”

Too many people, he says, understand it as a word for “guardian”. The correct concept is stewardship of the land, which is very different, he argues.

“A guardian is a protector that stomps its foot and places its own ego in protecting something,” but kaitiakitanga, he explains, is about reciprocity. “If you want to take, you should be able to give back.”

Kaitiakitanga includes caring for people and involves past, present and future. It is not exercised just “for ourselves”, says Whare, but also “for our mokopuna’s mokopuna”.

“Architects have a pretty colourful track record of just plonking down buildings and creating these big sculptural forms that don’t really resonate or respond that well to the whenua.” For Whare, a successful project is “when a building actually fits in with the trees, and gives back to the waterways, and sits lightly on the earth. You can look at it and say, the architect that designed that designed it with love. Love towards the whenua, for the wai, for the moana.”

In terms of his work, he is proud of He Tohu, the Studio Pacific award-winning exhibition room at the National Library which displays taonga, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Built using windblown West Coast rimu and mechanically carved, the room’s design evokes the inside of a waka huia, or wooden treasure box. “It’s a once in a lifetime project... it’s a core space for all New Zealanders, to learn about our shared history.”

Outside of work, Whare enjoys painting. He lives in the CBD, and has a studio in his warehouse-style apartment “It’s just the perfect area to spend time and mellow out, yet you feel the buzz around you.”

Whare doesn’t exhibit, but he sells the occasional piece. Many find their way back home to Heretaunga, to his whānau’s 130-year-old villa. “The whole house is my gallery.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANNA BRIGGS

Home is where the art is – and art is in every corner of this fale. It’s on the walls, in the studio, and even under the rug. From Tonga, to Sydney, to Wellington, artist Telly Tuita tells Melody Thomas how this Lyall Bay bungalow became the place for him.

Home” means different things to different people. For some it carries memories of love and safety, for others uncertainty or distress. Those who’ve had to leave one home for another might spend their lives suspended between the two, never feeling fully accepted in either. But “home” is always more than just a structure.

For artist Telly Tuita, home is the Tonga recalled by his inner child, bathed in the hues of nostalgia. It’s in Australia, with the aunty and uncle he calls Mum and Dad. And it’s the Lyall Bay bungalow he shares with his husband Hoani, their chow chow Bella, and regular visitors, including their daughter Molly Mae, who lives down the road with her Mums.

The bungalow sits on the flat between Kilbirnie and Lyall Bay, close enough to the beach to be technically part of the latter. It’s a sweet, pale mint whare snuggled cosily between the houses either side.

When Telly opens the front door, his trademark bubbliness announces itself immediately. He ushers me into the lounge, insisting on getting us sponge

cake and coffee. The house is simple and tidy, newly renovated with walls painted grey-white, windows and doors framed in natural wood, and mid-century and Georgian furniture thoughtfully placed. Telly’s artwork brings it all to life. His paintings, photographs, and collages hang on every wall in every room, a riot of colour, pattern and texture. In a cluttered space it might all be too much, but here it’s perfect. It’s like a cosy gallery, with comfy couches, well-tended plants and a fluffy canine companion.

Telly and Hoani first met in 2016. Hoani had been visiting Sydney, where Telly lived, and was headed out for a morning run on his last day in the city. He bumped into Telly, who was returning from a friend’s three-day long birthday bender. The meet-cute is a perfect snapshot of their personalities: “Hoani’s lovely and quiet, and I'm loud and a bit of a show-off ,” says Telly.

Hoani was charmed into accepting a ride to the airport from Telly the next day. “That was the game changer for him,” explains Telly, “He said what he’d seen the night before, and what he saw coming and picking him up were two completely different people… [Here was] this nice young man in loafers and a shirt, and a dog, in a nice car.”

The rest – as they say – is history. Telly and Hoani fell in love over FaceTime and via trips between Sydney and Lyall Bay, where Hoani was living, and they eventually began to discuss how they might close

the geographical distance between them. In the end Telly decided to come to Aotearoa, and they bought the Lyall Bay bungalow. Moving countries and buying a house with someone is a big commitment, but Telly’s used to uncertainty. “I thrive in the unknown. I thrive in the whatever,” he says.

Telly was born in Tonga in 1980, but his Dad lived in Australia, and his Mum left when he was a baby, so he lived with extended family. When Telly was seven or eight, his Grandad came to collect him from wherever he was (there are no records and Telly is uncertain). He was enrolled in school, given his first taste of routine and stability, and then in 1989, he was told he was being sent to live with his Dad in Australia. Telly had no idea what Australia was. He hadn’t met his Dad, had never left Tonga, and didn’t really speak English (his Grandad had started to pass on bits and pieces. The first two English words Telly learned were “apple” and – somewhat fittingly – “house”).

In a photograph taken at the time, Telly stands next to his Grandpa Solomone Tu’niua Tuita and a cousin, staring forlornly at the camera. It’s the earliest existing picture he has of himself.

“I look sad as hell, in my little uniform and sandals… Spiky hair, big eyes, probably snot running down my nose,” says Telly. “Heading off to God knows where” I say.

“God knows who and God knows what,” he finishes.

Telly arrived in Minto, a working class neighbourhood in south-west Sydney, and moved in with his Dad, step-Mum, and her three daughters from a previous relationship. It was a huge change for Telly, and he struggled to adjust. He clashed with his step-Mum, who Telly believes had pushed to bring him into their home, but then found it wasn’t as she’d expected. “You assume that you’re gonna get a child you can sort of mould, but I wasn't mouldable or changeable,” he says.

At age 14, Telly was kicked out, eventually settling in the nearby suburb of Campbelltown with his uncle, aunt, and their three sons. Telly had had a little taste of something like home with his Grandad in Tonga, but in Campbelltown he got to settle in. His aunt became like a Mum to Telly, helping him get through high school and university, supporting him when he came out, taking him to

his first musical and his first art gallery. These days Telly has relinquished the anger he once held towards his step-Mum, understanding things must have been difficult for her too, but he has only immense love and gratitude for his aunty-Mum. “A big part of my success is due to her,” he says.

After leaving school, Telly applied to both art school and the army, an unlikely combination of choices, but “because of the way my life was, nothing ever was set in stone,” he explains. Luckily for us, Telly got into art school first.

Telly finished his Fine Arts degree at Western Sydney University in 2003, but in a working class family there was pressure to get a “real job”, and “artist” didn’t cut it. The day after he graduated, Telly registered to do a bachelor’s degree in art teaching. He followed this with a Master’s in Special Education and then began working as a special education art teacher. By the time he met Hoani, Telly was a deputy principal, though he’d never stopped creating.

“I always had certain materials lying around just in case I had to scratch that itch”, he says, but “teaching took over, and art was just going to be a hobby.”

Teaching might have remained Telly’s career, if he hadn’t moved to Aotearoa, where Hoani suggested he focus on art full-time instead. Telly had already converted the bungalow’s sunroom into a studio,

and not having to worry about paying for a space when he wasn’t making money from his art made the idea of pursing it feasible. “In some ways, the art has been made because of the house,” he says.

Telly’s studio might be my favourite room here. It’s also an aesthetic outlier: messy and cluttered, shelves nearing collapse under the weight of raw materials, walls splashed with paint and scrawled with the first bursts of creative ideation. Showing me around, Telly pulls open a filing cabinet and begins rifling through piles of old work (earlier he pulled up a rug to reveal his photographic backdrops, and behind the shower curtain hid materials waiting to go to a storage unit).

Despite telling me mere moments ago that both Hoani and the gallery that represents him have told him to stop giving artworks away as gifts, he presses one into my hands: a small collaged painting depicting figures in silhouette, a moonlit ocean, and the words “Love is not an emotion, it is a skill we need to learn.” Given what he’s just told me I know I should refuse, but I can’t. I adore it, the words as much as the images. It’s soon framed and hanging on my bedroom wall.

Telly’s energy is explosive; his art-making can’t be contained by the studio’s walls. Some mornings, he takes over the dining room table, painstakingly drawing and colouring ngatu over coffee. When it rains, Telly stalks between the house and the shed with

spray cans, willing newly lacquered canvases to hurry up and dry. When it’s fine and his photographer is in town, Telly poses in front of elaborate faux-photo-studio sets in the backyard wearing bright masks, costume pieces, or sometimes just underwear, capturing the Tongpop aesthetic he’s become known and celebrated for.

Because these days, art is his “real” job. Since moving to Aotearoa, Telly has exhibited all over the country, been a finalist in a handful of art awards, secured representation from Bergman Gallery Auckland, and participated in high-profile group shows – including Whetūrangitia / Made As Stars, showing at The Dowse until February 2023 – as well as delivering his hit Tongpop shows. It all adds up to a successful second career, made possible in no small part by the bungalow he now calls home, and the boundless love and support of Hoani.

“I think I was lucky to have found him,” Telly tells me, “I hope he’d say the same thing about me.”

Later, I email Hoani to see how he defines home. His reply is perfect: “Home could be anywhere for me. At the moment it is in this house because that is where I feel safe and nurtured – and that is because of Telly.”

Skiller instinct

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOSIAH NEVELL

Through his MakeRoom workshops Nigel Scott encourages both kids and adults to design, tinker, and develop their practical skills. DIY-phobe Craig Beardsworth tries his hand.

Bouncing eight-year-olds have taken over the driveway of a house in suburban Miramar. Large plywood boards laid on the ground to protect the concrete and act as work benches, spray paint colours have been chosen, and wooden templates for a game controller are ready to be decorated. They are being taught how to shake the cans. For an eight-year-old, shaking a spray can is a full body experience and must be accompanied by giggling. The tutor explains how to avoid spraying your face – it sounds important. I leave them to it and walk down the driveway to a garage.

I am visiting MakeRoom. It once was a garage, but is now an extensive complex of workshops and classrooms devoted to teaching hands-on skills. Proprietor (and evil overlord, according to the website) Nigel Scott oversees three programmes in the ever growing space: STEM Club (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths), a holiday programme series, and adult classes.

Hanging from the rafters near the front of the main workshop, a sign encapsulates the essence of the space. Each letter is in a box and has been individually treated – some spray painted, others silhouetted with astroturf or screws and washers behind, others with cogs and wheels nestled behind perspex. All are handmade and whimsical.

In 2017 Nigel and his partner Lucy set up a workshop downstairs in their recently purchased house. He wanted his boys, then nine and 10 years old, to have a space in which to tinker and create things. News of the workshop spread among the boy’s friends and Nigel began creating projects to amuse a few kids in his spare time. By mid-2018 the few grew to 28 students, and MakeRoom turned commercial. By the end of the year 50 students were descending on the house every weekend, and a waiting list formed. “I was no longer getting any weekends to myself. I knew I needed help, and it was time to leave work.”

Work was at Park Road Post Production, where Nigel had been a sound editor for 12 years, and garnered four nominations in the Hollywood Motion Picture Sound Editor’s awards. He’d worked on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Hobbit trilogy, and many others, often acting as emissary between director Peter Jackson and composer Howard Shore. Earlier there had been a Chapman Tripp Award for theatre design, lecturing at Toi Whakaari, and stints at the Edinburgh Festival, the Sydney Olympics, and sound engineering for royal events across the United Kingdom. Why abandon such a storied career for MakeRoom? “I’m incredibly grateful for my time in the film industry,” Nigel says. “I needed a fresh challenge. I spent a long time realising the vision of other people, and now I get to realise my own vision.”

Part of Nigel’s vision is parked in the driveway – a large white van. “We had parents from Ōtaki to Wainuiomata willing to travel to us. Now we can go to them.” Next term MakeRoom is hiring Scout and community halls across the region and taking their mix of electronics, robotics, and woodwork on the road. The 28 students from 2018 will now grow to 260, with a staff of four part-timers. The longterm plan is to have a space in the city for projects involving larger equipment while the van covers the outer suburbs. “My boys are now old enough to be eyeing up this space for a teenage pad”.

Nigel admits to missing the freshness that a new film project brings, but this is countered by the buzz that teaching gives him. Parents are encouraged to attend along with their children, and many end up being involved in classes. “There is something wonderful about watching children watching their parents learn alongside them. Seeing that everyone struggles and has to problem solve. It’s the best type of learning.”

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High on the hill

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADRIAN VERCOE

Their family house is many steps up from the roadside and enjoys glorious seaside views. The Thurston family tells Sarah Catherall what they love about their about their renovated home.

When Richard Thurston visited his parents in Seatoun he often looked up at a modernist house on the hill with a signature porthole window. He assumed the 70s house had been designed by Ian Athfield on the basis of its style.

Thurston, a Wellington artist and Weta art director, and his wife, Cushla, an architect and associate director at Solari Architects, often dreamed of moving to Seatoun. Richard had grown up there, and his parents and sister still live there. Richard and Cushla thought it would be a lovely place to raise their daughters, Nina and Amadee. On their wish list: a house with a sea view, which was close enough to walk to the beach to swim.

But with Wellington’s house prices surging, they expected their ideal to be out of reach – until the very house Richard had admired from below popped up online for sale. There were several reasons why it was within their price range. It needed considerable renovation and maintenance work, which was to the Thurstons’ advantage. And with about 70 steps up to the house, access was a barrier to many potential buyers, but they didn’t mind the walk. They bought the house about two years ago, and moved in last July.

“We love everything about being here. It’s like being on holiday at the beach,’’ Richard says.

They discovered the house had been designed by Dave Launder, a seminal figure in Wellington architecture in the 1970s and 1980s. He also designed the house next door, further up the hill, and his own family home in Karaka Bay, also with a porthole window.

Richard began an extensive renovation, keeping the bones of the house. Fortunately they love mid-century objects and furniture, so their existing pieces fit seamlessly into the environment. The living room is where they spend the most time. Their mid-century couch runs along one wall and they bought a round dining table from a vintage store for the other end of the room.

Their mainly New Zealand art collection is displayed throughout the house. The living area represents a wonderful use of space. When they bought the house, the stunning 180-degree view across Wellington harbour to Eastbourne was broken up by french doors. In one corner, a freestanding woodburner took up too much space. “The deck was also shaky, and it wasn’t nice being out there. With all the verticals you couldn’t see the view, and we just wanted to tidy that up,’’ Cushla says. “But for all that, the house still had a lovely, beachy view.’’

Richard ripped the fireplace out and lined the ceiling with cedar, which gives the space a honey glow and makes it feel warm and inviting. He built a new deck. He also renovated the kitchen, which came with original cabinetry. A huge pantry blocked the view. He installed kitchen cabinets from Bunnings, and replaced the kitchen floor.

Some structural work was needed. The house proved to have “a lot of rotten beams,’’ says Cushla. In the laundry, two-thirds of a 300ml beam was rotten.

Nina’s room has the signature porthole window, which was redone and made to open. And Richard added space by building a mezzanine floor, so she can have friends to stay in her room.

Amadee stands in the living room and looks out through binoculars at the panoramic view below. Her bedroom is the largest one, with a low vertical window giving a view of the street below. Richard and Cushla’s bedroom is on the lowest level. Eventually the plan is to build a deck off it, linked with the other outdoor spaces.

From the main deck, Richard can spy the primary school he attended as a child. In her former job Cushla helped redesign the school in its new life as Te Kura Kaupapa Maori O Nga Mokopuna, Seatoun. At Solari

Architects, she now specialises in medium density housing for Kainga Ora and private developers.

Living on Seatoun’s hillside inspires Richard to create art. Many of the photographs in his most recent exhibition are images of the sea and Orongorongo ranges in the distance. Orongorongo shows the peaks in the distance, while Warm Glow features the fog rolling in. “The view is always changing and I never get sick of it.’’ Richard loves watching the sun come up and the ships coming in across the Cook Strait. “I get up early for the magic hour.’’

They’ve kept their Brooklyn home, where Cushla designed a studio for Richard at the back of their house, using timber from her father’s own mill. They run it as an Airbnb. Dave Launder is still a practising architect, living on the Kāpiti Coast. They invited him over, curious to know what he thought of their iteration of the house he designed more than four decades ago. “He said he always really loved the house, and he was impressed with what we have done to it,’’ Cushla says.