COURTESY OF

This is a recording of the talk at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery on the 25th of March 2026, titled ‘(Mis)representations of Te Tiriti in law and policy: the TPB, the RMA and everything in between’ by Senior Lecturer in the Law Faculty at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Luke Fitzmaurice-Brown, This talk was the final in a four-part series ‘Kōrero pono mai: talks on te Tiriti & The Treaty’ that ran in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Whai Wāhi’.These talks take heed from Te Waka Hourua, who call upon institutions to kōrero pono mai / tell the truth. Invited speakers will present short talks grounded in their experiences as legal experts, advocates and scholars in relation to te Tiriti and the Treaty.Fitzmaurice-Brown writes, one of the ways in which te Tiriti o Waitangi has been dishonoured since its signing is through its misrepresentation in New Zealand law and policy. From reference to ‘treaty principles’ in law to attempts to erase the Crown’s te Tiriti obligations altogether, legislation and policy has consistently fallen short of truly honouring the document. This kōrero will focuses on some of the ways that has happened, with particular reference to te Tiriti-based environmental policies, as well as high profile recent examples such as the Treaty Principles Bill. It will also discuss how these failings might be rectified, and what role all New Zealanders have to play in that.Dr Luke Fitzmaurice-Brown (Te Aupōuri) is a Senior Lecturer in the Law Faculty at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. His research focuses primarily on te Tiriti o Waitangi, child protection and decolonisation.

The final episode of the series features new poetry in response to photographs of 19th Century Aotearoa from the exhibition A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoa.In this recording of the evening event called ‘Long exposure’, we hear the 13th Poet Laureate Chris Tse and fellow poets Mary Macpherson, Arihia Latham, Margo Montes de Oca, Ada Duffy, Simon Sweetman, and Jackson McCarthy move around the gallery reading new work alongside photographs of their choosing.This event was developed in collaboration with the Alexander Turnbull Library and The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa and recorded on 07 May 2025.

The relationship of Māori with photography is a complex one. On one hand, it has been used as a colonising tool to ‘other’, feeding into harmful and reductive colonial stereotypes to appease a colonising gaze. In contrast, it has also been adopted as a symbol of mana and re/claimed to maintain whakapapa connections in a visual form other than the customary whakairo.In the second episode of ‘In Response’, artist Matt Tini discusses the complex histories of tangata whenua in relation to photography, and recontextualises the ways we view such images – historic, present and future – through a te ao Māori perspective.Tini asks such questions as, who were these images intended for? Who keeps the mauri alive of the tipuna represented in the early photographs? How are their stories being presented?This episode is part of a series of recorded talks in response to the exhibition A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoa, at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, from 1 February to 15 June 2025. The series ‘Through a Contemporary Lens: Artists in Response’ invited local artists to offer their response to particular photographs and was developed in collaboration with artist and educator Caroline McQuarrie. Recorded 17 April 2025.

Hanging on the wall in the Upper Chartwell, Brook Konia’s work Tūrangahakoa connects twelve paired bars pointing upward. A zagged manawa-line is revealed in the middle, signifying the journey one goes on in life. Altogether the artwork is a tohu of belonging, joy and aspiration. In this conversation with Rosalie Koko the 2024 Pia Nahanaha Taonga Curatorial Intern, Konia shares the kōrero informing Tūrangahakoa which navigates around the places, people, objects, customs and ways of relating to each other that transition someone from wandering and wondering to being welcome.This episode is a recording of the public programme eventTūrangahakoa, Brook Konia in conversation with Rosalie Koko, 1.00pm, Saturday 24 August, Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, as part of the exhibition The buildings notice me, Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, 13.07.24–22.09.24.

In the project The Power That Flows Through Us artist Matthew Galloway revisits cartoons from the 1970s/80s by Robert Brockie, Sid Scales, Gordon Minhinnik and Daryl Crimp. This historical era of cartooning is the starting point for this podcast episode, which is a recording of a panel discussion that took place on 14 May 2024 in conjunction with the exhibition Infrastructure: power, politics and imagination ,Sitting amongst Galloway's project - and in particular, next to historical cartoons enlarged as life-sized sculptures - are the panelists: Sharon Murdoch, the first woman political cartoonist in the Aotearoa mainstream media; Sam Orchard, Assistant Curator for the Cartoon and Comics Archive at the Alexander Turnbull Library; and, cartoonist and researcher, Dylan Horrocks. In this wide-ranging conversation, the panel explore such themes as: the importance of cartoons to the political imaginary; cartoons’ influence on public opinion; the politics of the 70s/80s generation of cartoonists; what political cartooning looks like now; and what it might be in the future.

On the occasion of the exhibition Folded Memory (18 November 2023 - 28 March 2024) this podcast episode is a recording of a poetry reading in the Gallery on Wednesday 13 March 2024, titled Spoken Ecologies.For Spoken Ecologies 2023/24 Tāhuhu Kōrero Toi Summer Scholar in Art History at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Margo Montes de Oca brought together poets to share work in response to Folded Memory. Using their poetry to bear witness to the kaleidoscopic stories of geology and ecology of Aotearoa, these readers guide us through shifting landscapes of time, extending the tendrils of human language out towards the more-than-human. Featuring Joan Fleming, Ash Davida Jane, Ruben Mita, Niamh Hollis-Locke, Loretta Riach, and Hana Pera Aoake.

This episode features 'Aro Toi/ Art Collection in Focus' curator Sophie Thorn speaking with artist Cora-Allan on Saturday 16 September 2023, in a floor-talk associated with the exhibition 'Back of House'.Cora-Allan is of Māori (Ngāpuhi, Ngātitumutumu) and Niue descent. A contemporary practitioner of the Niue tradition of barkcloth known as hiapo, Cora-Allan is credited with reviving the ‘sleeping artform’ which has not been practised in Niue for several generations.In this conversation Sophie and Cora-Allan discuss the material processes of harvesting whenua paint and the materials science of producing natural dyes as they relate to Cora-Allan’s three works on hiapo, on display in ‘Aro Toi /Art Collection in Focus: A Gift, A Celebration, An Invitation’.

Every second Tuesday lunchtime, Christina Barton, Director of the Adam Art Gallery and co-curator of In Relation: Performance Works by Peter Roche & Linda Buis 1979–1985, selects a performance in the exhibition and reads the relevant original notes drafted by the artists or compiled by their most assiduous audience member, the critic and curator Wystan Curnow. Her idea is to bring a live dimension into the gallery as a way of animating the documentation on display and sharing first-hand insights in their unedited form. Each reading is between 15 and 30 minutes in duration with some comments before and after.In this session Tina reads three texts by Peter Roche & Linda Buis that describe performances at Auckland City Art Gallery (December 1981), Auckland Museum (March 1982), and Manawatu Art Gallery (August 1982), documentation of which is displayed in one vitrine in the Upper Chartwell Gallery. These three texts share a focus on the role of the audience in the unfolding of each work, proving how contingent each performance was on the actions and reactions of the people who happened upon or came to watch each piece.

A conversation with writers Tina Makereti, Gregory Kan, and Gwynneth Porter, chaired by Thomasin Sleigh.Writers are inspired and challenged by the visual arts, whether it be for its politics, its abstraction, its humour, or through creative and productive friendships with the artists themselves. But what does ‘responding’ to an artwork really mean? What are a writer’s specific considerations for different commissions and publications? Beyond the essay, what is the potential of fiction, poetry, and other literary forms to respond to a work of visual art? And what is the role of the reader, as the third party in a collaboration between a writer and artist?This episode was recorded at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery on 24 May 2023, in conjunction with the CIRCUIT exhibition ‘Legacies: Five Short Films for Cinema’ by Edith Amituanai, Martin Sagadin, Ukrit Sa-nguanhai, Pati Tyrell, and Sriwhana Spong, 13 May - 30 July 2023.A starting point for this kōrero is the accompanying Legacies reader edited by CIRCUIT’s 2022 Writer in Residence, Thomasin Sleigh. The conversation begins with Thomasin Sleigh inviting Tina Makereti to read an excerpt from her short story, Black Milk (2016), which is republished in the reader. This story was written in response to a photograph by Fiona Pardington and went on to be the Pacific Regional Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2016.Tina is joined in conversation by writers Gregory Kan and Gwynneth Porter to discuss their writing and its dynamic and evolving relationship to the visual arts.Please note there is a brief microphone malfunction from 36-39 minutes.

Every second Tuesday lunchtime, Christina Barton, Director of the Adam Art Gallery and co-curator of In Relation: Performance Works by Peter Roche & Linda Buis 1979–1985, selects a performance in the exhibition and reads the relevant original notes drafted by the artists or compiled by their most assiduous audience member, the critic and curator Wystan Curnow. Her idea is to bring a live dimension into the gallery as a way of animating the documentation on display and sharing first-hand insights in their unedited form. Each reading will be between 15 and 20 minutes with time for questions after.In this reading Tina reads Wystan Curnow’s original notes written soon after attending Peter Roche & Linda Buis’s Liaison performances at Real Pictures in Auckland in March 1980. This was the first time the pair performed together in public as an acknowledged duo. Tina uses the occasion to track the shift from live action to historical event by then reading the notes prepared for the exhibition as a foil to Curnow’s raw report. We are grateful to the author for allowing us to share these direct thoughts with our audience

Welcome to the first episode of ‘Walking, Talking, Reading, Writing’ Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery’s podcast series exploring themes running through the exhibitions ‘Nick Austin: Life Puzzle’ and ‘Aro Toi / Art Collection in Focus: Ana Iti, A dusty handrail on the track’. The common point of departure is a push-pull approach to language and physical structure, referencing different approaches to narrative sequencing and spanning physical or temporal distances.This episode features Rachel O’Neill, a Pākehā queer filmmaker, writer and artist living and working between the Kāpiti Coast and Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. Rachel develops screen-based projects, writes books and collaborates on cross-disciplinary projects, seeking out fresh ways to see and understand the human condition and to unearth the humour and strangeness that underlie experience.On the 8th of March 2023 Rachel presented a playful and poetic discussion exploring the interpersonal tones and shifting arrays of voices that shape our day. During this talk, participants were invited to spend some time ‘listening to the voice’ of an artwork of their choice, exploring it in relation to self, moment and situation. It was hoped that these personal ‘found sounds’ might generate curious ‘chords’ of experience for private or group reflection.The talk was an intriguing undertaking that provoked a unique reading of the exhibition. This episode is Rachel’s adaption for podcast, opening the experience to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Lunchtime talk12pm 01 December 2022O’Brien held many roles during his long life – he had been a radar operator in the airforce, a businessman, a city councillor, and eventually the president of the World Peace Council. As a prominent politician he was elected during a time of change within both the Labour Party and within Aotearoa as a whole. In this lunchtime talk political historian, Jim McAloon, offers compelling insights into the social and political context in which Gerald O’Brien lived and worked.Jim McAloon is a professor of history at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. He has a wide range of interests in the economic and social history of New Zealand and other places. For some years he’s taught a second year course in New Zealand political history, and has published a number of works in the field, including (with Peter Franks) Labour: The New Zealand Labour Party 1916-2016 (2016).This is from our lunchtime talk series Bridging Worlds that ran alongside Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery’s exhibitions Lucien Rizo's 'Everything' and Megan Dunn's 'the Mermaid Chronicles'. These talks explore private obsessions in real world contexts and the ways imaginative personas enable slippage between identity categories.

Lunchtime Talk recorded on 17 November 2022Lucien Rizos in conversation with Gregory O'Brien.Gerald O’Brien was like a father to Lucien Rizos, yet throughout their time together O’Brien never mentioned his lifelong creative project which is featured in Rizos’s exhibition, Everything. Join Rizos in conversation with Wellington artist and writer Gregory O’Brien as they discuss and try to make sense of O’Brien’s life and the fantasy world he kept secret.Gregory O'Brien is a Wellington poet, essayist and painter who curated exhibitions at City Gallery Wellington between 1997 and 2009. While there, he worked with Lucien Rizos on his 2005 exhibition Where I find myself. Gregory O'Brien's monograph on painter Don Binney is forthcoming from Auckland University Press in 2023.Everything is a project by Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington-based artist Lucien Rizos. Over three years he has documented the possessions of his uncle, Gerald O’Brien (1924–2017), Labour Party MP for Island Bay (1969–78) and local businessman. Rizos has organised his documentation into more than 60 magazines that canvass everything O’Brien kept relating to his public and private life. He has also made detailed composite photographs of his uncle’s bookshelves as an extended portrait of someone he was close to and deeply admired. This exhibition brings Rizos’s large-scale photographs, magazines and scanned imagery together with actual artefacts from O’Brien’s archive. It focuses in particular on Rizos’s most startling find. This is his uncle’s secret art project worked on from childhood well into his adult life that invented a parallel world with an alternate geography, nation states, public figures and histories. The exhibition presents invented maps, lists, newspapers and hand-written histories as well as hundreds of his cut-out and hand-painted figures that represent named personages holding public office in his imagined world. Working with curator Robert Leonard, Rizos both offers up his uncle’s secret life to its first public scrutiny and tests the capacity of his medium to effectively tell O’Brien’s story.This was the first in our lunchtime talk series Bridging Worlds that ran alongside Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery’s exhibitions Lucien Rizo's 'Everything' and Megan Dunn's 'the Mermaid Chronicles'. These talks explore private obsessions in real world contexts and the ways imaginative personas enable slippage between identity categories.