Otago Necklace

Other Projects

Sniper's Prayer (In the Church Yard, First Church, Moray Place, Dunedin, 2015)

Making History (Waiheke Community Art Gallery WI, 2009)

Whero Kuriwao/Red Bush Dog (Waiheke Island, Private Collection, 2009)

Kuri/Dog (Dunedin City Council, Art in Public Places Commission, 2008)

Line of Dogs (Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts, Townsville-North Queensland, 2005)

Tinnie Waka (James Cook University North Queensland 2005)

TIWAI (Dunedin Public Art Gallery 2004)

Tiwai Archaelogical Boxes (2001/2005)

Whakamaoritanga/Translations (Hocken Library Gallery, Otago University 2000)

Motupohue/Bluff Hill Lookout (1994/2000)

Otago Necklace (Private Collection 1998)

Papakihau/Slapped by the wind (1993-1996)

FLUXUS: Selected Works (1983-1987)

In June 1844 surveyor and New Zealand Company land agent Frederick Tuckett negotiated the sale of the Otago Block of 160,000 hectares from the Maori chiefs Taiaroa, Tuhawaihi and Karetai for 2,400 pounds.

A blue-glass bead necklace now displayed in the Maori Gallery of the Otago Museum was given to Taiaroa's whanau; daughter Nikuru and granddaughters; Fanny and Nani Weller as a gift to commemorate the payment of the historic land transaction.

The Otago Necklace was made for the 1848-1998; 150th Anniversary of Otago and Southland. The necklace contains three gold beads, each marking a 50-year segment with the remaining 147 blue-glass beads completing the total, 150-year cycle.

The necklace maps and measures time and space linking early Otakou/Maori and emerging European harbour communities. The central gold bead appropriates a traditional Maori reel unit-form and signifies the gold discoveries of the 1860s, which made Otago, Dunedin a wealthy city and province.

The necklace is a combination of bi-cultural content; Polynesian form with European materials; gold and blue-glass as hybrid and representation with the coloured materials alluding to Otago's regional tones.