WELLINGTON has the first-ever comprehensive display of muskets intricately decorated by Maori and Pacific Islanders.
The exhibition, held at Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures, displays the carved weaponry held by museums around the country. Curator Pat Stodart stresses its.
“There’s never been as many of these seen together, any museum that has them, only has a couple. We’ve managed to get some from the 1840s, through to others we’ve had done especially for this 2010 show,” he says.
Artists and carvers such as Wayne Youle, Michel Tuffery, and Clive Fugill have contributed new carved muskets.
It was Fugill, (who has carved modern muskets for years), who made the exhibition a reality.
“We saw an example of Clive’s work in 2007 at a Wellington Maori art market, and it got us thinking,” says Stodart. “This is something that has been going on for over 100 years, and it’s still being done.”
He says the display is less about the guns and more about the carving and history.
Maori started carving muskets almost as soon as the first whalers and traders came to New Zealand in the 1820s and swapped the weapons for “anything they liked”.
“Traditional weapons such as the taiaha, mere, and patu were always carved, and it was just a matter of transferring that tradition to a new piece of technology,” says Stodart.
He says carving weapons made them “tangible pieces of mana” (authority/power/honour), and weapons like a taiaha were often used in a haka.
“We’ve got pictures of Maori doing the haka with muskets too. Carving one claimed it as theirs. It’s a European piece of technology, but when you carve it, it becomes very Maori or New Zealand,” Stodart says.
His favourite piece in the exhibition is a pistol from the Te Papa collection that was given to a soldier as a prize in a Taranaki marksman ship competition in 1860s.
“John Nodder was a shop-keeper, but also a part-time soldier who was serving on the English Colonial side. The pistol he won was carved in Maori style, and it was kept in the family for years,” says Stodart. “It blurs the line of whose side anyone was on.”
Carving Muskets Pu Whakairo, Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures, to September 29.
Join experts, carvers and artists to discuss the history and continuing development of carved muskets, 2pm, Pataka Main Gallery, June 13.