Courtesy of Radio New Zealand - Mana News 2005-08-25

Presenter (Dale Husband): The General Manager of Toi Maori, the Maori Arts collective, has just concluded a highly successful promotion of Maori art and this country in San Francisco, says the Expo moved Maori art on from traditional forms. Gary Nicholas says many of the Americans who have come to know traditional Maori art works, took a little while to come to understand that, and he explains to Derek Fox what he believes the Expo proved.

Image: Derek Lardelli in San Francisco
Courtesy of Radio New Zealand - Mana News 2005-08-25

Presenter (Dale Husband): The General Manager of Toi Maori, the Maori Arts collective, has just concluded a highly successful promotion of Maori art and this country in San Francisco, says the Expo moved Maori art on from traditional forms. Gary Nicholas says many of the Americans who have come to know traditional Maori art works, took a little while to come to understand that, and he explains to Derek Fox what he believes the Expo proved.

Image: Derek Lardelli in San Francisco
Gary Nicholas (General Manager, Toi Maori): I think what it showed and proved was that we have again revealed to our New Zealand promoters which is Tourism New Zealand that there are parts of our culture that we have been developing over a long period of time and that we are very, very competent in talking about our landscape and our history and who we are as a contemporary people, probably better than most people would understand.

The muscle that comes from working with the tourism organisation is something way beyond what Maori art has had for a long time, and that's what it's going to take for this country to present itself within the world's forum. It's going to take a number of government agencies and private organisations like Toi Maori to work together. If there was anything that that waka did, it brought back that whole concept of 1990 that if you co-ordinate people to work towards a common goal and to work in a cohesive manner, we can achieve amazing things.

PRESENTER: It's not just that though isn't it, it also proved that Maori art is not just a collection of relics, it's something that in the 21st century can pack a whole lot of people into a gallery and to show an interest in it?

NICHOLAS: Yeah, the interactive of having an articulate group of native people in Maori, able to speak in English, and to articulate their - not only their history but what they have become, was a telling effect. The art in itself is of such a high standard that in a world of heaps of art, when you see things like those cloaks being presented and the photographs of those tupuna on the wall and you see the hands of the weavers actually making material, and that on the opposite wall you see the works of contemporary artists who are inspired by their weaving experiences, you can't help but look at it and say this is an amazing culture of people.

PRESENTER: Can you expect that there will actually be a flow of Maori contemporary art into the San Francisco area now which will, you know, not only highlight this country but also turn a dollar for the people who are making it?

NICHOLAS: We are not convinced that that's there yet. There was probably an audience that were absolutely struck by the culture and by the sheer dynamism of the way that we present our culture. The critical review of our art didn't happen. I didn't see any reviews in the paper that took a critical eye out from an arts community, and I didn't get a sense that the collectors were actually buying. We had a lot of people who came very close and they were a little concerned as to whether we could supply consistently that calibre of art over a longer period of time. The meetings that we held with the Mayor's office, particularly with a guy called Bill Lee, was very keen to see us establish dealer galleries which looked at Maori art, to look at cuisine in terms of Maori food. He was surprised we didn't have a Maori restaurant in San Francisco. The Mayor of San Francisco is extremely interested in us establishing businesses within his precinct. He's wanting San Francisco to be the point of entry for the whole of the Asia Pacific region. He knows about Australia, they know about Asia; New Zealand is an unknown. So they would probably have looked at us as being part of Asia, another Island culture. So that's where I'm really heading with this but I'm going to need a whole lot of support from our people, that they will be positive about this and that they can see that there's an economic return for our people, more than just an art. It's our whole culture that really turned those people on.

PRESENTER: Well, you mentioned the waka and I only saw photos, but to see a Maori waka on San Francisco Bay was quite extraordinary.

NICHOLAS: It was a hook and the tourism people were really good at raising the profile or raising an interest. When I was approached and asked for a waka, to start with I thought okay, I've got to be open-minded because this is not how Maori see our culture, this is how another group see our culture and how it can engage with the American market. That waka was the image that was flashed right across the country. I saw examples of it in so many of the big newspapers. San Francisco said that they struggled to get into the Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times does not report on activity that happens in San Francisco, there's a rivalry there that I wasn't aware of. But the waka appeared in the Los Angeles Times; it appeared in New York, in Miami, in Chicago; it was in Seattle, and so they were aware that there was something happening. I met a number of New Zealanders who - their initial response was one of disappointment. They were expecting taonga that had come out of old collections of pre-European works and over a period of time they realised that Maori had moved way beyond that. This wasn't even 1984, it wasn't even '94. This was way beyond that and they became elated because they saw that with our art - and they were well aware of the writings of Witi Ihimaera and Pat Grace, they were aware of our musicians - Moana Maniapoto, they had seen our people portrayed within film and they were now just so elated that we had become what we wanted to be.

PRESENTER: Gary Nicholas from Toi Maori ending Mana Report for today.

Interview with Derek Lardelli
Courtesy of National Radio 25th August 2005
PRESENTER (LYNN FREEMAN): Pop star Robbie Williams is one of a growing number of international celebs now sporting Maori-style tattoos so it's no surprise that the ta moko artists who demonstrated their art during a recent Maori Art Meets America expedition to San Francisco, found themselves in huge demand from the locals. One of them was Gisborne-based arts laureate Derek Lardelli.

DEREK LARDELLI (TA MOKO ARTIST): The people were very friendly. They made the show happen and as a result of that it became very much an emotional path for us because we knew that we were in an arena that was opening up a whole lot of doors throughout America.

PRESENTER: I understand too that there was intense interest in the work that you were doing, the moko, the tattoo work, was a real point of focus for them?

LARDELLI: Yes, well being San Fran [sic], they were very liberal about what they were looking at, and we were getting crowds five to eight deep and you know, almost claustrophobic at times but just the energy that they were letting off - and that was just wonderful.

PRESENTER: Did you have people wanting - you know, approaching you, wanting to have you tattoo them essentially?

LARDELLI: They watched for the first two to three days as we worked on our own people, and then once we came to a closure on that, there was a huge interest to get their own kirituhi done on themselves by us.

PRESENTER: And what was your response to that because I know there are, you know, artists here who will refuse to do them. What's your view on that, Derek?

LARDELLI: Oh, our view on that was that we must share what we have in the world and kirituhi is a means of ta moko that we can share with other people other than Maori. Ta moko itself belongs to the people of the land, it has a genealogical trait that ties everyone back into our land, but what we have to share with other people is kirituhi. It's a form of skin marking using our patterns. So often people - there's also a mixture of people over there. We also worked on Hawaiians, Cubans, Spanish people. There's a fairly broad range of people that live in San Francisco.

PRESENTER: The pattern you describe, is it like a set pattern because of course there's meaning isn't there, in all the tattoos that you do on - you know, on your own people, on Maori people, so did they have a choice in what they could get or was it prescribed what you could do?

LARDELLI: No, they had a - we'd sit down with the individual and go through some of the things that they would like to see on their bodies because at the end of the day the aesthetic beauty of it is to make sure that it's good for both parties.

PRESENTER: Were they prepared for the pain factor?

LARDELLI: Quite a few of them already had clearly substantial tattoos on them so they were aware of what was going to happen.

PRESENTER: Were you more inclined maybe to tattoo people who had gone through that experience, because I guess there'd be some people for whom it would be a surprise.

LARDELLI: Yeah, I think that's part and parcel of the challenge. A lot of them had watched for a while and therefore they were quite aware of what was going to go on and had got themselves physically prepared, mentally prepared to go through the operation so it was fine.

PRESENTER: And what do you think - I mean we started this conversation with you, Derek, saying that you knew yourself that this was an opportunity to open doors and that's in fact why this whole thing took place. What doors do you think it may have opened? Has it opened any for you do you think?

LARDELLI: Well you know, obviously we'd made a lot of connections over there in particular with our - with the Indian people that are from America and the Canadian Indian people that had come down to support, people like Demsey Bob and other cedar wood carvers who had come down to support what was going on. We'd substantiated on our friendships with those people and as a result of that obviously there's going to be movement again into Orlando [phon] and a movement of the exhibition, te a - [in maori] The Eternal Thread, will carry that as it goes through America and then we're up into Canada next year.

PRESENTER: With the Ohlone people, I know some of the weavers, you know, found it fascinating to talk to the Ohlone people, the indigenous people of San Francisco. Is there a tattoo culture among them?

LARDELLI: Yeah, certainly we saw one or two members that had the traditional type moko on their faces that came in to talk to us about the lines that they had and the cultural meaning behind them.

PRESENTER: Did you find similarities yourself? That must have been fascinating for you, working in this field?

LARDELLI: Not necessarily in terms of design but in terms of the cultural - intellectual cultural property that they were carrying with their moko marks on their faces and on their bodies. There was a lot of similarities there.

PRESENTER: And technique?

LARDELLI: Certainly, same type of technique.

PRESENTER: I guess the hope is that this will be the first of many, that this - you know, as they judge the success of it. From your perspective as somebody who took part, did it achieve everything you'd hope for?

LARDELLI: Everything and beyond. You know, it was the partnership between Toi Maori, Air New Zealand and Tourism New Zealand was a good one and so I think yeah, we've got a wonderful future ahead of us as New Zealanders and Maori.

PRESENTER: And that's Derek Lardelli, ta moko artist.