Story: Contemporary Māori art – ngā toi hōu

This artwork, ‘Ta te whenua’, is the response of artist and educator Robert Jahnke (Ngāi Taharoa, Te Whānau a Iritekura, Te Whānau a Rakairoa o Ngāti Porou) to conflicting Māori and Pākehā attitudes to land, money and power. 

At the time the work was created, in 1995, the New Zealand government was attempting to settle Māori land grievances through a one-off cash settlement known as the ‘fiscal envelope’. In Jahnke’s work, huge rubber stamps bearing the message ‘not negotiable’ stand on an aerial photograph of Martinborough, a small town in the Wairarapa. The streets of Martinborough were laid out in a grid representing the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom.