Published 2024 by Tāhuhu Kōrero Toi Art History, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington
44 pages
210mm x 170mm, softcover, colour illustrations
Edited by Susan Ballard and Raymond Spiteri
ISSN: 1176-5887

Rachel Buchanan:
Rei is a taonga gifted to me by my cousin Mary-Anne Crompton and carved by Mary-Anne's husband Steve Myhre. Rei has the quality of chatoyance: a band of light moves beneath the surface of the pounamu. The kōrero captured here flickers across realms of pain, generosity, reciprocity, renewal and care. These concepts guide the whakapapa of this lecture - a whānau history of Aotearoa art that begins with the Motunui Epa and traverses three centuries to find deep connections and continuity between the world of our old people and the work we Taranaki artists are making today.

Dr Rachel Buchanan (Taranaki Iwi, Te Ātiawa) is a member of Te Aro Pā Poets collective and Te Pouhere Kōrero. Her latest book, Te Motonui Epa (BWB Books, 2022), was a co-winner of the 2023 Ernest Scott Prize and the W.H. Oliver Prize, and a finalist in the Māori Literature Trust's Keri Hulme Award and the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. A new edition of her first book, The Parihaka Album: Lest We Forget (Huia, 2009), will appear in late 2024 and her essay, "Beating Shame: Parihaka and the Very Long Sorry," is anthologised in Maranga! Maranga! Maranga! The Call to Māori History: Essays from Te Pouhere Kōrero, 1999-2023 (BWB Books, 2024). Rachel also wrote Stop Press: The Last Days of Newspapers (Scribe, 2013) and Ko Taranaki Te Maunga (BWB Texts, 2018).