- New Zealand’s jewelers work within a rich material and cultural history that ranges across the Pacific
- They access a fusion of influences following a turbulent and traumatic colonial past
- They bring a DIY attitude of experimentation and exploration
- They stand close to the Māori tradition of passing knowledge down through whānau (family) and iwi (wider tribe)
When Art Jewelry Forum approached me to write an article on this topic, at first I thought the question would be better answered by someone with more of an outside perspective, maybe not an artist. (Can you imagine being asked, “Why are you so good?”) But there are definitely elements that make us kiwi jewelers unique, and I figured perhaps my years spent in Germany could give me some objectivity.
Many countries have a bunch of awesome jewelers. Aotearoa belongs to that cohort. We have a number of artists contributing significant positions in contemporary jewelry, despite our small population of just over five million.
Aotearoa’s traumatic colonial history, shaped by the arrival of British colonists in the early 19th century and the subsequent impact on the indigenous Māori people, who had migrated to Aotearoa from eastern Polynesia hundreds of years before, has left significant scars. Māori artists/craftspeople and their perspectives were dismissed, and the work they made appropriated by colonial society. Successful contemporary art in Aotearoa largely reflected a Eurocentric view. Māori have had to fight hard, things are slowly changing, and in contemporary jewelry today we have a rich selection of works and perspectives, attitudes, and positions.
Materials such as pounamu (jade/greenstone), kōiwi (bone), anga (shell), rakau (wood), harakeke (flax fibre), kōhatu (stone), and the subsequent tools and techniques used to work them have a rich history not only in Māori culture, but also in the wider Pacific. We have large communities of people from Pacific nations in Aotearoa, too.
Art and craft in Aotearoa celebrates and interprets these materials and cultural history, and you’ll often find these materials in our jewelry pieces. I’ve used them at times in my own work to help with answers to my questions, sometimes quite unconsciously. As a Pākehā (non-Māori/European New Zealander) artist born and bred in Aotearoa, with ancestry going back to the first colonists, but with extended family connection to Māori, I absolutely have to deal with these issues in my work, as I believe we all should.
How do Pākehā artists deal with their history? First off we become allies, actively supporting Māori however we can. Our artistic channels of automatically foraging and borrowing from all that is around us, from childhood to the current day, are challenged. We become tentative at times, we pause to look deeper, we may comment (in the work), then continue with new perspectives and influences.
I write the English word next to the Māori, which you often see in writing from Aotearoa. This is not only symbolic of the struggle to preserve Te Reo Māori (Māori language) but is also about the respectful recognition of one of our official languages. It is still necessary to do this—we currently, for example, have a coalition government that is trying its hardest to reverse the progress Māori have fought hard to achieve.
Aotearoa has also had its share of international jewelers visiting or settling here, bringing with them an aesthetic, an attitude, another kind of knowledge of jewelry-making and goldsmithing. Some of us have left Aotearoa, then returned. Pieces made are often a fusion of all these developing and changing influences—Māori and Pacific culture, Pākehā culture (by which I mean the rituals and cultural information historically from Britain), immigration and emigration, the coming and going of information.
The first contemporary jewelers have always been described as “self-taught.” But actually the jewelers of that generation, roughly from the 1960s to the 80s, all had some kind of training or arts education (albeit sometimes in a different field). The craft and design courses, set up within various art schools around the country, began in the late 80s. I was part of those first student intakes. A student then could eventually study contemporary jewelry full time. (Before that there were very few traditional academic or apprentice pathways.)
The DIY attitude, experimentation and exploration, based in the craft and art movements of the hippie then punk rebellions of the 60s and 70s, and the Māori tradition of passing knowledge down through whānau (family) and iwi (wider tribe), still hovers about. We haven’t embraced the academic jeweler quite as much as other countries. Currently we have a situation where nearly all the jewelry departments in our art schools have closed (there are still a couple). I predict a return to the celebration of materials—their culture, history, and power—and to spontaneous experimentation with the tools and techniques that shape them. Everything else will fall into place. Good jewelry is the aim.
Kallan MacLeod
We have a number of dealer galleries who support our work—most art galleries will have a jeweler or two in their stable. Fingers gallery, in Auckland, has just had its 50-year anniversary. It’s the longest-running jewelry gallery in the world. Some public galleries and museums have strong contemporary jewelry collections and collect regularly.
Our plant and sea life is incredible. Much of our art and craft borrows from nature. Whether we’re taking the piss or are classically crafty, we can’t escape its power. Nature and the organic form seep into many contemporary and historic artworks.
We run quite a bit of activity outside Aotearoa. This would also explain the attention we get at times. When punching above your weight, it all becomes about the attention. The Handshake Project that pairs up mentors with young Aotearoa jewelers has opened up connections outside of Aotearoa. Some of us study, travel, teach, and exhibit regularly in Australia, Asia, Europe, and the USA.
Munich, a contemporary jewelry hub, has strong connections to Aotearoa, with various relationships and friendships amongst artists, writers, and curators developing over the years. The internet has enabled our geographic isolation to become almost irrelevant. There’s without a doubt something unique that comes from living on two islands in the middle of the Pacific ocean, with a turbulent but powerful history, breathtaking nature, situated a long way from anywhere. It’s this combination of uniqueness and history that has produced a contingent of jewelers making excellent work.
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