Art & creativity, Central city, Things to do  |  8h ago

Share this story

A new installation by leading Aotearoa artist Ana Iti (Te Rarawa, Ngāi Tūpoto, Ngāti Here) – winner of the 2024 Walters Prize and 2025 Harriet Friedlander Award – is now open at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

Ngahere Behind a Pile of Metal draws on Iti’s research and time spent in the Hokianga, where her whakapapa is tied to the history of kauri. The installation combines large sculptural forms made from chain and metal pipe with an expansive drawing made directly onto the gallery walls using charcoal created from burnt kauri timber.

Curator Melanie Oliver says the work is both physically striking and deeply grounded.

“Visitors will literally walk into a drawing. The saw-tooth marks Ana makes in charcoal carve across the room, while the suspended chain sculpture hints at the ways kauri logs were once lifted, bound and moved across water,” says Oliver. 

“It’s a powerful, beautiful installation that asks us to think about our relationship to the environment – what we’ve taken, what remains, and what might still be repaired.

The exhibition title comes from a moment when an uncle gave Iti directions to find kauri on their hapū land ‘behind a pile of metal’. 

“Ana brings personal history and wider ecological histories together in a way that feels gentle, generous and utterly compelling,” says Oliver. 

Ana Iti says the project grew from time spent reconnecting with whānau, archives and stories tied to kauri and the Hokianga landscape.

“I kept coming back to this picture I’d seen of a boat being lifted out of the water in a kind of hammock of strops. Something about that shape – and the boat hovering in that in‑between space between sea and land – really stayed with me,” says Iti. 

“Drawing with charcoal made from burnt kauri feels like a way of acknowledging presence and absence at the same time – the tree isn’t here, but its trace is.”

“I’m interested in how environmental histories can show us both what was lost and what we might do differently. Learning about the kauri industry made me reflect on the scale of ecological change, but also on the possibilities for more thoughtful and respectful ways of relating to the natural world,” says Iti. 

Ngahere Behind a Pile of Metal closes on 26 July.  Writer Nadine Hura (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) will present an interactive talk on Saturday 23 May at 1pm.