Auckland Museum blog

Welcome to this week’s preview of Tamaki Paenga Hira, an informative program currently featuring on Maori Television exploring 13 taonga Maori from the Auckland War Memorial Museum collections.

Episode 11: Nga Pou Whakarae

This week we are introduced to the three tribes who hold mana whenua in the Auckland region. Three carved pou (ancestral carved posts), two from the Museum’s collections and the third commissioned for the exhibition, are used to represent the tribes.

(L-R) The 3 representing Ngati Whatua O Orakei, Tainui and Ngati Paoa.

Te Whare o Riri is the pou that represents Ngati Whatua O Orakei. It originally stood at Otakanini Pa in South Kaipara and symbolizes Ngati Whatua O Orakei’s paramount tangata whenua status over Central Auckland, including the land the Auckland Museum stands on.

Although ancestral knowledge has been lost for the pou representing Tainui, the carving style adorning the pou is acknowledged as coming from the Waikato region to the South of Auckland. This pou travelled with the Te Maori exhibition from 1984 to 1987.

The third pou represents Ngati Paoa and was hewn by master carver Tu Karamaene (Pare Hauraki tribes) using stone tools. The pou represents Paoa, whom the tribe is named after, a famous ancestor associated with East Auckland Region.

Please note that the three pou are on display on the first floor of the Auckland Museum in Te Ao Turoa – the Maori Natural History Gallery.

Tamaki Paenga Hira, Episode 11: Nga Pou Whakarae screens on Maori Television, Wednesday 28th December 2011 at 8.30.

Sharon Finn is perched on a ladder adjusting a cockroach that’s got itself twisted around the gilded cage of her chandelier. If you look closer, tiny artifical spiders, wasps, moths, and hornets dangle down from the cage. This fanciful chandelier, with its huge crystals and brass filigree, looks completely at home in the gothic-like domain of Toxica, one of the ‘suspects’ in The Poisoners exhibition at Auckland Museum.

Inside Toxica's boudoir

If Toxica is keen on collecting animals of the stuffed variety, Sharon also has a penchant for “a bit of taxidermy”. She has been known to keep 100-year-old birds and pussycats in the gilded cages of her chandeliers – and Toxica’s majestic owl holds great fascination.

Sharon Finn (yes, wife to Neil) is the creative mind behind Sharondelier, which makes individually handmade chandeliers, jewellery and lady frames. Her work has featured on fashion runways, art galleries, inside the stairwells of private mansions, on stage at music concerts – and now a museum.

The designer, who has recently taken to the stage herself as part of Pajama Club, approaches her craft with a great deal of wit and cunning. “We are into recycling [vintage items]. We buy old chandeliers and pull them apart, especially those with a lot of brass and crystals.” 

Remember Pollyanna and her blindly optimistic ‘Glad Game’?  It’s a memorable moment when she takes apart her Aunt Polly’s chandelier and hangs the crystals all around the window frame so they dance around the room. Exhibition developer Janneen Love says Sharon has spread the joy by giving freely of her time to create the chandelier. As the technician adjusts the lighting in Toxica’s boudoir, the chandelier glows from high up in the ceiling. The magic is already switched on.

Sharon Finn and her chandelier