Kōrero: Criticism and the arts

'Kahukura' (1968) was one of a series of paintings by Gordon Walters that used the koru (unfurling fern) pattern commonly seen in Māori art. Drawing on both contemporary European abstraction and traditional Māori motifs, Walters explored relationships between forms, creating a range of perceptual effects in the process. He commented, 'My work is an investigation of positive/negative relationships within a deliberately limited range of forms; the forms I use have no descriptive value in themselves and are used solely to demonstrate relations. I believe that dynamic relations are most clearly expressed by the repetition of a few simple elements.'